IT IS hard to believe that anyone would gamble over who owns a killer like the H5N1 bird flu virus, but it happened this week. A game of high-stakes poker is under way, and it is getting ugly. The outcome is critical if we are to have a vaccine, yet to resolve it successfully means dealing with some heavy historical baggage. The issues include who owns which genes, who gets to use them and on what terms, and how we deal with the chasm between rich and poor nations.
The problem, as we have noted before, is that H5N1 is…
