According to Helen Branswell's story in yesterday's Canadian Press, China is sharing avian flu virus data but not specimens. Excerpt:
China has posted the genetic sequences of a large number of H5N1 flu viruses isolated from birds in open-access databases - a step for which the agencies and outside researchers are grateful. But only so much can be learned from analyzing the genetic sequences of viruses. In order to determine whether the lethality of the virus is changing and whether the current prototype H5N1 vaccine would still be a good match, scientists have to be able to study live viruses, experts say....[Juan Lubroth, head of the emergency prevention system at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization] says China's slowness to share viruses reflects a concern there that the country's researchers do not receive adequate credit for their scientific contribution. [Earl Brown at the U of Ottawa] can understand that point of view, saying scientists the world over hoard their data in order to ensure they get credit for their findings, which is key to ensuring ongoing research funding. "You don't give away your data because the big labs will take it, they'll take the credit and you're sitting there writing a grant application without having the work published by yourself," he says. Another concern has been voiced by several countries affected by H5N1 outbreaks. They know part of the reason the developed countries want access to virus samples is to ensure that the seed strain for H5N1 vaccine is up-to-date enough that the vaccine would be protective. That rankles because these countries further understand that should H5N1 spark a human pandemic, their people stand little chance of getting access to limited global supplies of vaccine. "Some of the developing countries anticipate that they're going to be short-changed with that step," Lubroth admits.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/20/2005 03:31:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
