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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?"
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
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.