WHEN CSL proudly announced in January that it was applying to register its pandemic influenza vaccine, the company could not have foreseen that its supporting dossier would spark a global storm with far-reaching implications for vaccine research. Within 24 hours the Indonesian Government made headlines by declaring it was seeking intellectual property rights over the Indonesian strain of the H5N1 influenza virus, and that CSL had not been given permission” to use the virus for research. The move threw a spanner in the global system of virus sample sharing that has been successfully administered by the WHO for decades. Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said her country would withhold virus samples from the WHO and, instead, take the unprecedented...
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