Tervil Okoko
14 October 2000
Nairobi, Kenya — A row is simmering between a group of Kenyan scientists and their British counterparts over the patenting of an AIDS vaccine whose development they have both been involved in.
The controversy arises as a result of reports from London this week that the British scientists have given themselves all the credit for the vaccine by taking out a patent in Britain, leaving out the Kenyans.
Dr Job Bwayo, the leader of the Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative said "Immediately we realised our names were not included, we entered into correspondence with our collaborators to ensure we were reflected as part of the researchers. We're waiting for the outcome."
The DNA vaccine, developed by both Kenyan and British scientists, is based on a research carried out almost ten years ago on 50 prostitutes from the Nairobi slums of Majengo.
The research found out that the prostitutes had developed immunity from HIV infection as a result of daily exposure to the virus.
But although it turned out that the prostitutes later reverted to HIV-positive after quitting the trade, the researchers have been going on with tests on human volunteers on the vaccine's efficacy.
Bwayo told journalists that the Oxford University team, led by Prof. Andrew McMichael, is expected in Nairobi next week to respond to international charges that they jumped the gun by patenting the vaccine without any reference to their Kenyan counterparts.
Since the news of the unfair play reached Kenya in a report by the Daily Nation Thursday, there have been muted complaints right across the board questioning the whereabouts of the famed British sense of fair play.
The Kenya government has ordered thorough investigation, saying it will defend the Kenyan scientists.
According to tourism, trade, and industry Minister Nicholas Biwott, experts on patent procedures and laws have also been instructed to undertake detailed research over the matter and to advise the government on the right course of action.
"If the report is correct, then the matter is a grave one and it will be pursued," he said Friday.
The minister called upon Kenyan researchers to include matters of intellectual property rights in the launch of any collaborative research agreements or memoranda of understanding.
Kenyans have particularly been perturbed by the report quoting McMichael of Oxford University's Institute of Molecular Medicine as saying that his team had been forced to take out the patent so hurriedly and secretively "to prevent other organisations from doing so."
He was also quoted as being at pains to explain that the Oxford University team is a non-profit body, a thing Kenyans have interpreted as meaning that there is plenty of financial gain in the project.
The brouhaha could not have come at a worse time for the Britons - during the first Nobel Prize week of the millennium - and during an era of rampant intellectual property thefts, piracy and plagiarism.
Incidentally, Prof. Lier Reridar of the University of Bergen, Norway, recently cautioned scientists from the poor countries to make sure they enter into only well defined agreements with their Western counterparts.
From discussions with Bwayo and the other Kenyan researchers, it now seems that his team from the University of Nairobi Department of Microbiology collaborated with their Oxford University colleagues only on the basis of a memorandum of understanding, which was drawn up long before the AIDS vaccine project.
Unfortunately, the memorandum says nothing about patenting, giving the British scientists a leeway.
The AIDS epidemic in Kenya, as in the rest of Africa, is already overwhelming health care systems, devastating the country's work force and creating millions of orphans.
Recently, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the scourge as a "cocktail of disasters" during the first ever Security Council debate on a health issue.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2000 Panafrican News Agency. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
