September 8, 2006

China blames US lab for delay in sharing bird flu samples

China, which has not shared bird flu virus samples with foreign experts since 2004, has blamed a US laboratory for the long delay in getting the samples, saying it had not put in place import procedures, Chinese media said on Friday (Sep 8).

Citing the Ministry of Agriculture, the official China Daily newspaper said China had already prepared 20 samples for a laboratory at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, the US lab has not yet completed import procedures, causing an indefinite delay in the shipment of the virus, a ministry spokesman said.

China said this week it was putting in place procedures to share bird flu samples.

Scientists have long insisted that H5N1 samples should be shared to allow experts to trace the evolution of the virus and the geographical spread of any particular strain.

But those calls are not generally observed. Some scientists tend to be proprietary about samples, and prefer to publish their findings in prestigious journals first.

Previously in 2004, WHO made the samples from China available to foreign researchers who twice published the genetic sequence and other data of four of the five samples without giving credit to Chinese scientists who made the genetic sequencing and did the analysis, a Chinese newspaper quoted a ministry official as saying.

The WHO and the foreign researchers later apologised to the ministry, according to the paper.