(Vol. 311. no. 5765, p. 1224 DOI: 10.1126/science.311.5765.1224) entitled:

"As H5N1 Keeps Spreading, a Call to Release More Data"

"PARIS: An impassioned call by a prominent Italian influenza
scientist has renewed the debate about how to balance global health
against scientists' needs to publish and countries' demands for
secrecy. On 16 Feb 2006, Ilaria Capua of the Istituto Zooprofilattico
Sperimentale delle Venezie in Italy asked more than 50 colleagues
around the world to release all sequence data for the H5N1 avian
influenza strain into the public domain. Comparing sequence data from
every H5N1 isolate as soon as they become available is crucial for
understanding how the virus moves and evolves, Capua argues.

Putting her money where her mouth is, Capua entered H5N1 sequence
data from 2 recently infected countries, Nigeria and Italy, into the
GenBank database the same day. She also rejected an offer by the
World Health Organization (WHO) to join a select circle of 15 labs
that share bird flu sequences on a password-protected Web site.

Capua's lab is a reference center for the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health
(OIE), and officials at those agencies say they support her call. But
some scientists say sharing data instantly is complicated by the need
for credit, and WHO argues that without some form of confidentiality,
some countries would not submit samples at all.

Sharing information about H5N1 has been tricky from the start. WHO,
FAO, and OIE encourage countries to send virus samples to specialized
reference labs that can confirm the outbreak and study the virus
further. Some have been reluctant to do so because they worry about
intellectual-property rights or not receiving a fair share of the
scientific credit; China, for instance, has not shared any avian
samples for a year, a WHO spokesperson says. But even when reference
labs do get their hands on a virus, they don't always release the
data immediately.

For instance, in the past few months, H5N1 samples from about 15
European countries have been sent to the Veterinary Laboratories
Agency (VLA) in Weybridge, U.K., a reference lab for OIE and the
European Union. Lab director Ian Brown says he's sharing sequence and
other data with governments and the international agencies; to show
support for Capua's campaign, he also submitted the sequence of a
virus from an outbreak in Turkey that he says is a "progenitor to the
European epidemic" into GenBank last week. However, until a paper
about the European outbreaks -- which he says could be submitted in a
matter of weeks -- has been accepted, Brown says he needs to hold on
to the European sequences. "The staff in this institute is working
24/7 to provide this service," he says. "I don't think it's
unreasonable to expect ... for their endeavors." It also takes time
to negotiate the conditions of release with dozens of individual
governments, Brown says.

Capua counters that just isolating and sequencing a virus that comes
in the mail does not give researchers the right to sit on the data,
especially not at a government lab. "Most of us are paid to protect
human and animal health," she says. "If publishing one more paper
becomes more important, we have our priorities messed up."
Governments can often be persuaded to release the sequences, adds
Capua, who repeated her call at an OIE meeting in Paris on Monday [3
Mar 2006?] and also plans to submit it to ProMED, an e-mail list
about emerging infectious diseases.

WHO agrees that in an ideal world, scientists would share their data
widely and voluntarily, says Wenqing Zhang of the agency's Global
Influenza Programme. But because that's not happening, the agency
created a special secured section at the Influenza Sequence Database
at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in 2004. Currently,
some 15 labs have passwords to access these data, says Zhang,
including WHO's 8 reference labs. The system is invaluable for WHO,
she adds, as it helps the agency track the virus and adjust risk
assessments if necessary.

Virologist Yi Guan of the University of Hong Kong, which has a huge
H5N1 collection, says he would be prepared to release more data
publicly before publication but is looking for WHO to establish a new
policy. Until then, WHO's secure server at least ensures that
policymakers and most of the scientists who advise them have access
to vital information. But Capua says everyone with an interest should
be able to browse all the data. When she was offered access in
exchange for submitting her Nigerian sequence last month [February
2006], she declined. And the system gets mixed marks within WHO as
well. "Personally, I'm not in favor of it," says WHO scientist
Michael Perdue.

Whether scientists' fears of being scooped are justified is difficult
to say. In theory, once sequences are posted in the public domain,
anybody could write a paper about them. In practice, journal editors
will ask manuscript authors to get permission if they write a paper
about unpublished data they did not submit to GenBank themselves,
says Caroline Ash, who edits infectious diseases papers at Science.
But Brown says he'd rather not take that risk."