Recipe for a Pandemic

This Wall Street Journal article focuses on the subject of the sharing of avian influenza virus samples with international pharmaceutical companies and their researchers. Virus-sharing for research purposes, as stated here, may lead to vaccines to protect against the avian flu virus only if scientists are able to carry out research using virus samples. The samples at issue in this article are from human victims. However, in Indonesia, the Health Ministry reportedly refuses to give avian flu virus samples taken from Indonesian avian flu victims to the World Health Organization (WHO).


According to this article, to date, Indonesia has released only two virus samples of its nearly 60 fatal cases of avian flu, and has specified that they are to be used for surveillance, not vaccine research. The article claims that this surveillance was solely to reassure tourists destined for the islands of Bali and Java. It indicates that it is the Health Ministry that is preventing the information-sharing.

As stated here, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari asserts that Indonesian bird flu is a form of intellectual property from which the country should benefit. The article speculates that either the intellectual property issues are linked to a desire to insure that the country receives affordable access to vaccines that may be developed, or that Indonesia may want to profit from their worldwide sales.


The article examines the issue of rumours about Indonesian politics related to vaccine research controversy. It discusses the possibility that the virus sample sharing issue is being manipulated, perhaps, to appeal to nationalist or to Islamic group sentiment prior to next year's elections, if not to "tinker with the financial incentives that drive pharmaceutical innovation".


International negotiations on virus sample sharing are taking place, but the article advocates for a hasty resolution so that vaccine research and testing can conform to the WHO's systems for monitoring the emergence of seasonal influenza and possible pandemics as well as arm scientists with the tools to develop vaccines.