Indonesia has signed a memorandum of understanding with Baxter Healthcare,
whereby Baxter will pay Indonesia for samples of the avian flu virus.
At the same time, Indonesia has stopped sending samples of the virus to the
WHO.
Baxter Healthcare says this development is not its fault, reports Donald
McNeil in the NYT:
A Baxter spokeswoman said the company had not asked Indonesia to stop cooperating
with the W.H.O. She added that the agreement under negotiation would not give
it exclusive access to Indonesian strains…
“Baxter has nothing to do with this,” she said. “Our role
is in developing vaccines. We’re not involved in ownership decisions.”
Some leading flu experts said they believed that Indonesia was acting on its
own, not understanding the ramifications.
Nevertheless, is Indonesia is standing firm, and seems to understand the ramifications
perfectly well:
A spokeswoman for Indonesia’s Health Ministry told Reuters yesterday
that the country “cannot share samples for free.”
“There should be rules of the game for it,” said the spokeswoman,
Lily Sulistyowati. “Just imagine, they could research, use and patent
the Indonesia strain.”
What’s going on? It seems that Indonesia has
a beef with the WHO:
The action underscored in dramatic fashion Indonesian displeasure over the
production of a vaccine from a strain of H5N1 the Indonesians sent to WHO.
WHO in turn sent it to Australian blood products company CSL to produce an
H5N1 vaccine, using a model of non-exclusive seed strain sharing with vaccine
makers now used for seasonal influenza. In this context, CSL did not notify
or ask permission of the Indonesians:
[The] news this week that the Australian pharmaceuticals company CSL had
developed a vaccine against the H5N1 bird flu virus was met with alarm by
Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari.
She says Indonesia is seeking intellectual property rights over the Indonesian
strain of the virus on which the vaccine is based.
In other words, it’s Indonesia, not Big Pharma, which is trying to
assert IP rights over viral isolates – something which is allowed, if
not usually practiced, under international IP law.
Concludes Tyler
Cowen:
If this entire episode does not convince you that IP law is out of control,
I don’t know what would.
Well yes, IP law is out of control. But it’s kinda ironic that it’s
only when a developing country starts trying to take advantage of it that big
multinationals like the WHO go whining about it to the New York Times.