Immunocompetent

Here are some notes, updated when I feel so moved, from the resumed WHO Pandemic Preparedness Intergovernmental Meeting (WHO PIP IGM).  This is the continuation of previous WHO PIP IGM meetings on the topic that is commonly understood to the be the conflict between Indonesia and the US over virus sharing, but which in fact is broader and much more complicated.  The meeting reopened on Monday, 8 December and will last until this Friday or Saturday.

This is not a comprehensive report.  It's a collection of thoughts about issues, particularly when they are amenable to being dealt with discreetly.  A more comprehensive piece will, hopefully, follow.

The mini blog posts here here are:

Pretending You are In Charge (WHO)
America Insults the Scientists of the Developing World - Or Is It About Patents?
Japan's Big Bluffer 

Pretending You are In Charge (WHO)

To any careful observer of the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network it is clear that labs in the powerful countries - like the US, Japan, UK, and Australia - just do whatever they want with H5N1 samples  and call it a WHO activity.  They are "WHO labs" in name only.  (More)

Stashed away in a somewhat obscure corner of the .mil webzone are an interesting set of H5N1 reports. Prepared about every week by the US Pacific Command (PACOM) and the Australian Army's Land Headquarters (LHQ), the reports summarize recent developments with H5N1 with an interesting twist.  Who they are prepared for isn't clear; but Immunocompetent thinks they look like a slide that goes into scheduled briefing for higher-ups somewhere on the military food chain, probably at the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, on whose website the files can be found.

We have some choice extracts below; but there's plenty more interesting reading that you can download. (And if the OSD "disappears" this information off its website, we have a complete archival copy.)

The reports, marked "unclassified", provide abbreviated updates H5N1 cases worldwide; but they are more interesting for what they select as newsworthy H5N1 politics.

Recently, PACOM has been very interested in the NAMRU-2 negotiation and the WHO PIP IGM, and the reports have included information not public elsewhere.  For instance, details on conversations between WHO staff and US government representatives, and on the (apparently failed) bilaterals between Indonesia and the US. (These were facilitated by Australia.) (More)

A flu article recently written for SUNS...

US military flu virus collection parallels WHO virus system

Bogota, 26 Nov (Edward Hammond*) -- A large and rapidly growing global US military virus collection system parallels the World Health Organization's Global Influenza Surveillance Network (WHO GISN) but does not entirely share its public health purposes.

The US military system is a source of viruses for the WHO GISN; but it does not give most of its virus collections to WHO. It does keep all the lab specimens and viruses it collects for its own use.

Wider knowledge of the extent of the US military virus collection system and its ambiguous relationship to the WHO GISN system will raise important questions for the WHO Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Inter-Governmental Meeting (PIP IGM), which will convene in Geneva the second week of December. (More)

WHO has posted the Chair's Text to be considered in December at the next installment of the WHO Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Intergovernmental Meeting (WHO PIP IGM).  The meeting name is a mouthful; but all you need to remember is that this is the group that is trying to resolve the virus sharing controversies.

The Chair's lengthy text is exactly that, a text drafted by the Chair of the meeting, and word on the street is that the Australia's Jane Halton actually did do much of the drafting. (Often "Chair's texts" are only nominally written by the Chair.)

Too bad the text doesn't do a better job of plugging gaps in the system and reflecting the proposals of developing countries.  A complete listing of problems great and small would probably explode this blog's buffer; but, in short form, here are some of the key problems in Halton's text that will have to be resolved:  (More)

This is a short paper that I wrote late last year on the contradictory and self-destructive US and EU positions on influenza virus sharing and the Revised International Health Regulations. It was originally distributed at a meeting of the Pugwash Study Group on the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions and is thus written from a security perspective, and uses terms like "biosecurity".

I generally think that security language is essentially useless and even counterproductive for talking about flu, particularly the ill-defined term "biosecurity" which is dangerous (I try to always put it in quotes). I use it nonetheless because it is (hopefully temporarily) part of the lingua franca of security types (but never public health, I hope!).  (More)