difficult words.
WHO Director General Margaret Chan at the World Health Assembly last week.
WHO / Pierre Albouy
scientists are-Dutch hampering the fight against a new lethal coronavirus by patenting the virus and make it unnecessarily difficult for web other scientists to study? Accusations to this effect were flying last week at the World Health Assembly (WHA), the annual meeting of health ministers of the world in Geneva, Switzerland. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), has used strong words in an apparent attack on virologist Ron Fouchier and his colleagues at Erasmus MC Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
But there is nothing unusual about the arrangement under which Fouchier shared samples of the virus, several scientists and an expert in intellectual property say Science Insider . And so far, nobody has offered concrete examples of how legal provisions have slowed research. Criticism is "totally unjustified," said Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn in Germany, which has developed diagnostic tests for the virus. "Nothing has been blocked."
Fouchier group identified the virus, now called Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), in June last year after receiving a sample of Ali Zaki, an Egyptian doctor working in hospital Dr. Soliman Fakeeh in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. MERS has sickened 49 people from five other cases were reported today by the Saudi government and killed 24, raising fears that it could begin to spread throughout the world, as its distant cousin of SARS was in 03.
the debate last week began with a story May 20 CBC citing Frank Plummer, head of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, saying that the group had to Rotterdam made it difficult for others to use the virus. "[T] here was a lot of negotiation and many lawyers involved with both us and the Americans and others around the world," said Plummer, "which slowed things a bit."
on 23 May, Saudi Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish intervened to WHA, complaining that intellectual property considerations slowed the development of diagnostic tests. "We are still dealing with the diagnosis and the reason is the virus was patented by scientists and can not be used for investigations by other scientists, "Memish was quoted by the French news agency AFP. According to the report, he continued to insist that the contracts had been signed with vaccines and pharmaceutical companies, which he must approve each time another laboratory wants to use the virus.
Chan seemed to endorse the comments after Memish. "Why your scientists would send samples to other laboratories on a bilateral and allow other people to take intellectual property right way on the new disease?" She asked, according to AFP, who said she added , to thunderous applause: "No IP (intellectual property) should stand in the way of you, the countries of the world, to protect your people."
Erasmus MC denied the allegations in a press release issued Friday. "Rumors that the Viroscience department of Erasmus MC hinder research into MERS coronavirus are clearly erroneous and not based on facts," the statement read. Virologist Ab Osterhaus, who heads the department, said he does not understand controversy. "We have given the virus to almost any laboratory that asked," says Osterhaus.
The debate was confusing in part because commentators have confused two different things: first patents and so-called material transfer agreement, or MTA, on the other.
Erasmus MC has applied for a patent on "the use of sequence data receiver and host" because without patents, companies would never invest to diagnosis, vaccines or antiviral drugs for MERS says Osterhaus. But demand is still pending, and it may take months before the patent authorities rule on it and the patent becomes public. Erasmus MC has not yet measured the commercial interest Osterhaus said - let alone companies control data on who can get their hands on the virus, as Memish of Saudi Arabia claimed.
The question now is the MTA, a document that most biomedical laboratories regularly use when exchanging cell samples or pathogens. It governs, among other things, that the receiving laboratories can do with the virus. The MTA for the MERS virus, which was obtained by Science Insider, states that the viral material still belongs to the original supplier (in this case Erasmus MC) and the recipient can not give it to other laboratories. It also requests the written consent of Erasmus for the use of viruses for commercial purposes.
While Erasmus MTA does not claim ownership of the virus in countries where it exists or has been isolated, it protects its legal ownership of virus samples it shared with other agencies, said David Fidler, a lawyer at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, who studied international sharing of pathogens. "The press release and the MTA preserve the rights of Erasmus to obtain intellectual property rights for vaccines and drugs-related research on the virus sample from Saudi Arabia," he said. But MTA Erasmus is "a fairly standard agreement," Fidler said. "There's nothing here that suggests to me that it needs a huge amount of negotiation ... anything where I thought it unusual or very restrictive . "
Other scientists agree. Matthew Frieman, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, said he ordered the virus as soon as he heard. It took a few weeks to get the paperwork done, he said, "but there was nothing unique in this process." Drosten, which has developed a diagnostic test using the Erasmus MC virus, said that "everyone can use [the virus] free." "What really shocks me is that the WHO seems to buy in "complaints, he said.
WHO spokesman Gregory Härtl refused to answer questions about Chan's comments. a spokesman Plummer said he was available for an interview to clarify its complaint; instead, the spokesman sent a written statement confirming that there had been "delays and restrictions on [lab] in getting this virus."
Memish, in an interview with Science Insider yesterday said he did not see the MTA itself. "I have spoken to many scientists who said they are not willing to take the virus because the MTA was too restrictive," says Memish, but he did not give specific examples. "I was doing my comments on this assumption, "he said. But Memish said the matter did not stop the search in Saudi Arabia itself, where most cases of the virus have been found.
Even if the MTA does not mind sharing the virus, questions on intellectual property rights might surface in the future. Memish said his main complaint is that Zaki sent a virus sample taken from a patient in Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam first and Erasmus MC has been able to apply for patents as a result. "The samples were shipped out of the country ... without the knowledge or permission of the Department of Health and I can not believe that all countries on this planet would that happen," says Memish.
Zaki said he gave a sample of the same patient at the Saudi Ministry of Health. "They tested for swine flu and will not continue," he said Science Insider yesterday . only then reach out to Fouchier "We have the right to confirm the results around the world," he said Memish said it simply not true.. his ministry was never informed of new disease in hospital Jeddah, he said, and learned from him three months after the patient's death, when Zaki sent information about it to ProMED, a list of e-mail for disease outbreaks. "For [Zaki], a Science or Nature paper seems to be more important than human lives," says Memish. Zaki, who now works in Egypt, said he was not only forced to resign but that "they closed the lab [in Jeddah] and asked all the material to be destroyed."
Whoever is right, all parties agree that the virus was originally isolated in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the real issue behind the discussions is whether Saudi Arabia should benefit in some way from anything out research on the virus, said Fidler.
The global health community has debated similar issues before. In 07, Indonesia has triggered a crisis when it stopped sharing samples from people infected with the strain of H5N1 flu, over concerns they would be used to develop vaccines against the pandemic that the country would unable to pay. This issue was finally resolved in 2011 through a sharing system called if Preparedness Framework Pandemic Influenza, which rewards countries to share viruses.
The agreement concerns only the influenza virus and coronavirus not like MERS. Yet now, "the sharing of virus and benefit sharing are related to global health," said Fidler. "Despite stressing that it is for Global Health, Erasmus does not mention benefit sharing issue in the press release." But Osterhaus, who wrote a letter to Chan clarify his position, said that Zaki's is the first name on the patent. "We intend to share from the beginning, and we do not first understand that there were problems between Zaki and the Saudi government," he said.
The dispute can not be resolved anytime soon, said Fidler. "She sufficiently key hot spots that have not gone further than that may persist even if we have all the facts on the table and nobody is to blame in particular," he said. "This is unfortunate, because it seems that this is a dangerous virus and we should be able to do better."
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