An article in The Straits Times from newswire Associated Press (AP) drew my attention to a festering disagreement between proponents of an innovative global sharing initiative for influenza information and the World Health Organization, the official UN Agency that has run the global influenza surveillance system for more than a half century. The new system, The Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID), began midway through 2006 and has made rapid progress. It came into being to deal with dissatisfaction with the existing system wherein WHO allowed influenza gene sequence information to be deposited in a restricted access database at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This was an improvement over the conventional practices of many leading flu scientists who kept their sequence information secret and private until they published it. This locked up potentially important information longer than necessary and if there was no plans to publish, perhaps indefinitely. The LANL database was a sharing effort by 15 leading flu labs but didn’t go outside that group. In 2006, Italian scientist Ilaria Capua complained in an open letter in Nature. It was co-signed by 70 other scientists. It called for greater transparency and prompt sharing of important information in the face of a possible pandemic. It was widely praised and many scientists now routinely use the GISAID system that resulted. But not all, and the article in the Straits Times suggests that GISAID is frustrated by WHO’s failure to support the effort:

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