David L. Chandler
david.chandler@newscientist.com
Celeste Biever
celeste.biever@newscientist.com
Gregory T. Huang
greg.huang@newscientist.com

peter.aldhous@newscientist.com
Michael Reilly
michael.reilly@newscientist.com

DesignCra i g M a cki e , M i ch e l l e O fo s u
GraphicsN i ge l H aw ti n , D ave J o h n s to n
PicturesAdam Goff

Stephen Battersby, Michael Bond,
Michael Brooks, Marcus Chown,
Rob Edwards, Richard Fifield, Barry Fox,
Mick Hamer, Jeff Hecht, Bob Holmes,
Justin Mullins, Fred Pearce, Helen Phillips,
Ian Stewart, Gail Vines, Gabrielle Walker,
Emma Young

Online PublisherJ o h n M a c Fa r l a n e
Online EditorDamian Ca rring to n
Deputy Online EditorsS ha o n i

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

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 mainly striking poor countries,
while only rich countries have the resources to
produce a vaccine against the virus, should it
turn into a human pandemic. Poor countries
already send rich nations samples of the virus,

down on exports of vaccine, so only the
countries with their own factories get any.
Poor countries get zip.

Indonesia has rightly perceived that if it
sends virus to the World Health Organization
and its collaborating labs it gets no more than
it does if it sends no samples. If it does the
latter, at least rich countries might do

Here, a long-standing effort to right one
of the world’s injustices is taking a hand. For
more than two decades, the mainly tropical
poor countries have battled for ownership

only fair that countries should profit from
the genes on their territories as surely as they
do from their inventions and patents.

resources. Indonesia is using this right to say
it owns its H5N1 and should get a say in who
can use it to make a vaccine. In return it wants
“benefit sharing” – in other words, the means
to make vaccine. It and a dozen allies proposed
at the WHO’s annual meeting that this should
apply to all nations in this situation.

negotiations (see page 6). The big question is
what happens now. If countries with H5N1
don’t share their viruses until a deal is
hammered out, it could mean nobody gets
any vaccine. Viruses evolve fast, and vaccine
development cannot be postponed while we
resolve a century’s worth of global inequality.

countries to freely share their pathogens so
vaccines can be made
as fast as possible.
This is where the

not be beyond the wit of these organisations
to include the virus supplier in such
agreements. Sorting this out is what the

What is most needed is goodwill. The WHO
and its rich backers should negotiate in good
faith and not stall. Indonesia – and China,
which has shared no virus for some time –

The final irony is that all this fighting is over phantoms: a vaccine that hasn’t been developed yet and pre-pandemic vaccine

To cap it all, today’s factories will not be able
to make enough vaccine for their home
countries during a pandemic, never mind
for everyone else. What we need is the means
to make vaccine for everyone, wherever a
deadly virus emerges. If we do not do that,
then regardless of who wins the global poker
game over H5N1, we will all lose the game

“If countries with
H5N1 don’t share
their virus until a
deal is hammered
out, it could
mean nobody
gets any vaccine”

NOT many people want a nuclear
power station in their backyard,
but that’s the prospect facing

of the Atlantic as governments weigh up where to build a new wave of reactors.

to spend over $3 billion during the next decade on stem cell research – the largest sum any body has

using human embryonic stem
cells. This is currently hampered
by restrictions on federal funding.

Opponents of embryo research
claimed the move violated
California’s constitution. Their

A STALEMATE between countries hit by deadly H5N1 flu and others that want virus samples to make vaccines seems closer to ending.

Health Organization meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, had agreed to find ways to share samples

launch negotiations between the governments involved. However, it was not yet clear if this would

people infected with H5N1 to
foreign labs that work with the
WHO. These labs track the virus’s

to use them to develop vaccines.
Indonesia says this is unfair, as
it is unlikely to be able to buy
vaccine based on its own virus
(New Scientist, 31 March, p 6).

send any more samples unless
it was guaranteed access to
resulting vaccines. Last week it
sent samples to a Japanese lab,
but from only two of the 15

Indonesian cases known since last
November. Indonesian officials
said further deliveries depended
on the WHO “making progress”
in resolving its problem.

but Indonesia has not said
whether it will send more samples
before then. “We can’t wait for

negotiations to finish,” a senior WHO official told New Scientist. “Viruses evolve too fast.”

Here’s the species forecast, issued on
World Biodiversity Day, 22 May: a gloomy
outlook for many species in the face of
climate change.

Released at the same time, the
MONARCH report by the UK’s Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
examined the fate of 32 species native to
the UK and Ireland up to the year 2080.
Seven years in the making, the report
finds that a quarter of the species,
including almost everything now
restricted to the cooler parts of the UK,
will be squeezed out as these regions
warm, says Pam Berry at the University
of Oxford, who co-authored the report.

Fifteen species seem to fare better,
with an increase in areas with a suitable
climate, and six species, including the
stag beetle (pictured), will be forced

Even these mixed results may paint
an overly rosy picture. Although
temperatures in these new regions may
suit these species, the habitats may not
be hospitable for them, says Berry, who
is working on a similar Europe-wide
report. It may also be impossible for
species to relocate to new areas, says
Hilary Allison of the Woodland Trust. “All
these studies say the same thing,” Berry
says. “We need to both cut greenhouse
gas emissions and help species adapt to
climate change in the here and now.”

At the same time the first
assessment of all European mammals,
carried out by the World Conservation
Union, shows that nearly 1 in 6
mammal species is now threatened
with extinction.

“Further deliveries depend on the WHO making progress to resolve Indonesia’s problem”

Now CIRM is free to raise some
$300 million per year by selling
bonds. Previously it was limited to
a $150 million loan from the state
government plus $45 million lent

CIRM still faces bruising
internal battles. Last month,
patient advocates complained

that its president, Zach Hall, was rushing to spend $222 million on new lab buildings. Hall resigned, two months before his planned

US soldiers who were exposed to high
levels of the nerve gas sarin in the 1991
Gulf war now have less white matter
in their brains than those who
encountered less of the gas. The
findings, published inNeuroToxicolo gy

support the idea that chemical
weapons caused Gulf war syndrome
(New Scientist, 6 November 2004, p 8).

Carbon dioxide emissions are growing
even faster than envisaged in
the worst-case scenario of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, according to Australian
research institution CSIRO. Emissions
growth suddenly accelerated between
2000 and 2004 because global energy
efficiency got worse.

DNA analysis has shown that a
hammerhead shark was born in a
Nebraska aquarium from a virgin
mother. All the shark’s DNA derives
from the mother, so the embryo must
have resulted from a rare process in
which an unfertilised egg develops
as if it had been fertilised (Biology

The ashes of James Doohan, who
played Scotty in Star Trek, were
recovered from the New Mexico desert
on 18 May. Last month UP Aerospace
launched the remains of Doohan and
200 others to spend 4 minutes in
suborbital flight at a maximum
altitude of 117 kilometres. On landing
the payload remained lost in the San
Andres mountains for 20 days.

The world’s last known stockpiles of
smallpox virus were given a further
four-year stay of execution from the
UN World Health Assembly on 18 May.
Originally slated for destruction in
2002, the US and Russian stockpiles
have been retained for research to
defend against biowarfare.

policy paper is offering the first
clues to where some of the
10 planned plants might be built.
Existing sites at Hinkley Point
in Somerset and Sizewell in
Suffolk are best suited for the
£1.2 billion reactors because of
their good connections to the

require flood defences because of the threat of rising sea levels due to climate change, says the report’s author Ian Jackson, an

500,000 silver and gold coins
weighing 17 tonnes and worth
hundreds of millions of dollars.

of the contents of any wreck it
finds in international waters, but
some researchers fear that the

ExxonMobil has been accused of
many wrongs when it comes to
global warming. Now the world’s
most profitable company can add
a rare charge indeed to the list:

At the annual investor meeting
in Texas on 30 May, shareholders
will vote on a resolution that
would require the oil giant to

develop “quantitative goals”
for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. Approval could send

shock waves through a company that officially acknowledges only a “risk” that human activity is

and Energy Project at Stanford, which researches clean energy technology. But Stanford

alumnus Kirk Miller argues that Exxon is exploiting the relationship to cultivate an

The funding, he says, is a token
gesture from a company with
profits in the billions.

“The haul has triggered a
debate over how delicate
wrecks should be studied”

Don’t say hybrid: say cybrid. That’s the
new name for an embryo created by
combining genetic material from
humans with eggs from other animals,
most likely rabbits or cows. The
terminology could help sidestep the
UK’s ban on the creation of embryos
containing both animal and human
genes – and it seems to be working.

On 17 May, the UK government
issued a draft bill to overhaul the
existing legislation and allow human-
animal “cybrids” to be created solely for
research purposes. It would also allow
animal genes or cells to be added to
human embryos for research purposes.

The draft bill runs counter to
proposals issued last year prohibiting
such research except on a case-by-case
basis. However, the new legislation may

take many months to finalise – and it
is not yet certain whether functional
cybrids can be created.

The rationale for cybrids is that
animal eggs are plentiful compared with
the human eggs required to create
embryos for stem cell research. Made by
fusing a human cell or its nucleus with
an animal egg stripped of its own
nuclear DNA, they contain a minuscule
amount of genetic material from the
animal – 13 mitochondrial genes –
compared with 23,000 human genes.
These embryos would yield essentially
human stem cells providing a “disease-

Minger of King’s College London, who
heads one of three UK teams hoping to
use cybrids to investigate motor neuron
disease and muscular dystrophy.