Indonesia Stops Sharing Avian Virus Samples

dankrabach writes "Indonesia has apparently decided to play the IP game, with the world's health at stake. The country, one of the hardest-hit by avian flu, has stopped submitting virus samples to the World Health Organization, and is negotiating to sell them to an American drug company that makes the vaccine. They feel slighted when they give away such samples, but then cannot afford the patented vaccines. Logical to me, given the rules of the game; however, can't we come up with some GPL'ish license to free any product based on this data?"

Re:Avian Flu

[PCM2]

We're waiting for the eventual mutation that will allow Avian Flu to spread through the air from person to person. So far it can't do that. So far, to get Avian Flu a person needs to eat or have contact with infected birds. Once it goes airborne, though, you will see Avian Flu killing a lot more people than the regular flu does. We're trying to figure out an effective therapeutic regimen before that happens.

60% Death Rate is the Big Deal

[eldavojohn]

I live near where a recent 'outbreak' of Avian Flu has occurred in England. Forgive me for perhaps not seeing the bigger picture, but what's the big deal? regular flu kills more people every winter in the UK alone than Avian Flu has the world over - ever. AFAIK anyway.

I think that Wikipedia might [wikipedia.org] have a good answer on this:

In almost all cases, those infected with H5N1 had extensive physical contact with infected birds. Still, around 60% of humans known to have been infected with the current Asian strain of HPAI A(H5N1) have died from it, and H5N1 may mutate or reassort into a strain capable of efficient human-to-human transmission. In 2003, world-renowned virologist Robert Webster published an article titled "The world is teetering on the edge of a pandemic that could kill a large fraction of the human population" in American Scientist. He called for adequate resources to fight what he sees as a major world threat to possibly billions of lives. So, as far as I know, the 'outbreak' you speak of must have been from people exposed to birds directly. Now, you might point out that that outbreak was quite small and few people died. But a 60% death rate is nothing to sneeze at (no pun intended). As the above paragraph points out, should this mutate to a strain of flu that is easily transmitted between human hosts (like some of the normal flu strains), the death rate would probably still remain at 60% or be even higher if medical resources are stretched thin.

I believe that's the "big deal," the fear of a mutation that isn't such a far flung idea considering other strains of influenza.

No.

[Pendersempai]

From the summary:

however, can't we come up with some GPL-ish license to free any product based on this data?

I doubt it. The GPL works because individual programmers receive some sort of personal, non-monetary benefit from contributing to a GPL project -- the reputation, the joy of coding, etc. No similar incentive exists for drug companies to engage in costly research without the proceeds that come from patents. The GPL also works because for-profit players have an incentive to give back their own coding: so that it can be incorporated into the code tree and not require them to reimplement it every time a new version comes out. Again, there is no analogous market force to compel drug companies to give back changes, or even to make the changes in the first place. Finally, the GPL is largely enforceable because it is usually very straightforward to ascertain whether GPL'ed code is in fact being used in violation of the GPL: the software company cannot destroy the evidence or allow it to decay because they need to keep the source code to continue development. I imagine that it is not so easy to determine whether a particular medical advance was inspired by pseudo-GPL'ed samples.

It seems to me that that country's approach is fair and effective. Alternatively they might consider contractually binding recipients of their samples to offer them the resulting patented medication at cost.

Re:Avian Flu

[NSIM]

I live near where a recent 'outbreak' of Avian Flu has occurred in England. Forgive me for perhaps not seeing the bigger picture, but what's the big deal? regular flu kills more people every winter in the UK alone than Avian Flu has the world over - ever. AFAIK anyway.

To understand the concern around H5N1 you need to consider two things:
1. Mortality rate - H5N1 has a very high mortality rate, something like 60% of the people who get it, die! Regular flu has a mortality rate much much lower (several orders of magnitude) so H5N1 is potentially very dangerous.
2. Transmissability - so far H5N1 has proved rather hard to catch (thankfully) but if that changes (something that has happened with other flu viruses) then you have the perfect storm of easy infection combined with high mortality.
For an idea of how bad a Flu epidemic can get, try typing "flu 1919" into Google, that epidemic is believed to have killed as many as 60 million worldwide. Today such an outbreak would probably be worse because it would be spread more quickly around the globe, would have many more densely packed cities to infect and a large (certainly in Africa) group of immune-compromised potential victims because of HIV.

Re:Avian Flu

[tjwhaynes]

Bird flu currently seems much deadlier, as more than half of the humans infected have died.

Be careful - I'd think about rewording that to "Bird flu currently seems much deadlier, as more than half of the humans known to be infected have died". We really don't have a good idea of how many people have been infected - we have a biased sample of the worst cases being reported (it doesn't get much worse than being dead).

That's not to say that Avian Flu isn't deadly - it is. It kills a significant fraction of the infected population. I suspect that the mortality rate is closer to 10% than 60% though when it gets exposed to a wider audience. I just hope we have an effective treatment (vaccine or medication) by that point.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Sheeesh! Always the Americans?

[Vinegar Joe]

The Indonesians are pissed off with the Australians *not* the Americans. Read this article from The Jakarta Post: http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp? fileid=20070208.A03&irec=2 [thejakartapost.com]

Re:Compare and contrast

[jb.hl.com]

Being British might have a smidge to do with it :)

Re:Avian Flu

[FrenchSilk]

You are also somewhat correct. All influenza viruses have the same ability to be transported through the air. That is, they are all "airborne", as you say. I think what you are tying to say is that H5N1 is not yet easily contracted by humans by inhaling the airborne virus. Nor do humans who are sick with H5N1 normally aerolsize and expel the virus. This is because it binds lower in the human respiratory track than seasonal influenza viruses do and therefore it is not readily spread by coughing or sneezing. This is one of the primary reasons that H5N1 is not efficiently transmitted from human to human.