Letter from Nuffield Council on Bioethics
I have pleasure in attaching a response from
the Nuffield Council on Bioethics to the inquiry on controlling
the spread of communicable diseases,
We focus in the response on relevant findings
from the Council's recent report: Public Health: Ethical issues,
which, among other things, considered infectious disease as one
of its case studies. Our observations concern two main areas.
First, the infrastructure and capacity required for the sharing
of pandemic-relevant information with surveillance systems managed
by WHO. Secondly, intellectual property and access issues arising
in the context of the recent controversy about Indonesia's refusal
to share influenza virus isolates with the WHO-sponsored surveillance
programme, as discussed at the World Health Assembly in May 2007.
I hope that this is a helpful contribution to
the Inquiry. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
18 January 2008
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