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Published online 19 December 2007 | Nature 450, 1137 (2007) | doi:10.1038/4501137a
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Q&A: Siti Fadilah Supari
Indonesia has been hit by more human deaths from the H5N1 bird-flu virus than any other country, yet it refuses to share its virus samples with the World Health Organization (WHO). Declan Butler talks to Indonesia's health minister.
Why is Indonesia withholding samples that could track the virus's evolution and help produce a vaccine?
Indonesia is open to international collaboration but this must be fair, transparent and equitable. The WHO's Global Influenza Surveillance Network system is obviously unfair and opaque.
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It seems to me that when we make science policies (or any other policies) we are forced to optimise one aspect to the detriment of others. This is because not all policy functions are independent or fully compatible with each other. This is like building a car, where engineers have to chose an optimising function to drive design among all the possible ways they could design a car: price, mechanical reliability, power, fuel consumption, handling, safety or marketing sex-appeal and so on. Obviously every car is an amalgam of all aspects with just one or two being successfully optimised. So it is with Indonesian policy on the H5N1 Bird-flu virus. Authorities there have seen the Bird-flu issue as they see every issue, almost entirely in political, tribal and economic terms. If you chose to optimise these particular functions, then their actions in withholding information to maximise tribal gain are eminently reasonable. By doing so they tacitly accept a continued loss of life through spreading infection. They are gambling on this risk being eventually contained and do expect to get kudos for its containment. And that's reasonable for they have been through this situation historically many times before. We on the other hand, at Indonesia's doorstep, wish to optimise containment of the virus. It is because our optimising functions are different that we will have to compensate Indonesia for their co-operation, even though it makes no sense within our own paradigm. Dr Donald McMiken
Well done, Declan on interviewing and recording the views of the Indonesian health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari. This interview demonstrates how politics and science are interlinked. Scientists in their publications don't often describe all the hurdles they overcame to do the research and get it published. As a person who worked with a team to publish an article on Three Clusters of H5N1 in Indonesia, I can assure you the real interest lies not in what the article said, which was important, but in the political process that was required to get it published. I would like scientists to start talking, writing and analysing conflicts that occur between science and politics and how this conflict hinders and maybe even benefits at time the research. In my view the Indonesian Health Minister is hindering scientific research, and using her power to play a dangerous game with the world community. As we know from the Tripoli six, sometimes politicians and scientists need to work together, to overcome a "travesty." I wonder if someone can use the knowledge gained from Tripoli six and other contentious scientific/political issues (e.g. global warming) to help forge a solution to potentially save millions of lives. One person can make a difference. Unfortunately in this interview we can see how one person is making a difference that puts the world at threat.