Call for OA to Flu Virus Genome Data
Helen Branswell, “Labs shouldn’t hoard flu data: Researcher”, Toronto Star, March 12, 2006. Excerpt:
A leading scientist in the field of genetic sequencing is calling on publicly funded U.S. researchers and research organizations to throw open their collections of H5N1 avian flu viruses to allow others to work toward lessening the pandemic threat the virus poses. Steven Salzberg wants the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as well as researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health to place their virus sequence data in open-access databanks on an as-processed basis. He hopes such a move would entice scientists elsewhere, as well as governments in H5N1-afflicted countries, to end a pattern of virus hoarding many believe is undermining the world’s ability to battle H5N1. “I think what ought to happen is that the U.S., starting with people funded by NIH and the CDC itself ought to start releasing all of their data and all of their samples — and lead by example,” says Salzberg, director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland. “Because one complaint I’ve heard from other scientists in other countries is: ‘Hey, the CDC in the U.S. doesn’t release all their data. So why should we?’ And that’s a very legitimate complaint.”…Salzberg was involved in the historic human genome sequencing effort as well as the teams which sequenced the first plant genome, Arabidopsis (mustard weed) and the parasite that causes malaria. Most recently, he has been working on an NIH-funded project that is sequencing vast numbers of human flu viruses.
He is adding his voice to a campaign started by Dr. Ilaria Capua. An Italian influenza researcher, Capua is challenging the current system which gives a small network of prominent flu labs preferential access to data by virtue of the fact they do testing and surveillance for the World Health Organization. These labs register their findings in a secure database so that they and the WHO can track changes in H5N1 viruses. But those virus sequences are slow to trickle out to the rest of the research world. (Typically, scientists only post data publicly when they publish findings in a journal, a process that can take months or more.) Capua was offered a chance to join the 15 labs with access to the WHO’s secure database after she sequenced H5N1 bird viruses from Nigeria and Italy, according to a recent article in the journal Science. She turned down the offer, choosing instead to place her sequence data in the open access database Genbank. Limiting who can work on the WHO data isn’t just hindering science’s ability to crack the mysteries of H5N1’s incredible virulence, critics say. It also hampers efforts by countries outside the WHO network to keep their H5N1 diagnostic tests up to date….The WHO is hearing the growing chorus of complaints. But to some degree its hands are tied. The viruses belong to the countries where they were collected. WHO cannot force them to share. And it doesn’t own — or pay — its collaborating labs, which are doing huge amounts of science for the global good.
Open Access News 03/12/06
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_03_12_fosblogarchive.html
