Scott McPherson's Web Presence

In order to catch up and not plow the same ground as my peers in flublogia have done so well, I offer this link to Mike Coston's excellent digest and Crawford Kilian's equally excellent digest of the recent Riau death from H5N1 -- and the strong circumstantial case for yet another familial cluster in Indonesia.

The blog can be found at: http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2007/11/rumblings-from-riau.html , and Crawford Kilian's entry can be found at: http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2007/11/wife-of-muhamma.html .

While all this is going on, the WHO and the Indonesian government continue to fiddle around the issue of some 58 samples of H5N1 the Indonesians sent to the WHO but never received back.  This all harkens back to the refusal by Indonesia to send samples to the WHO back in January of this year.  After much harrumphing by both sides, Indonesia finally relented and promised to send samples again.  However, the WHO did not start receiving samples again until September (http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest+News/Asia/STIStory_156965.html).  Jakarta has now said it wants its 58 samples back in order to manufacture its own vaccine (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/09/content_7039518.htm ).

Contrast this behavior with that of the Chinese government, which just released 23 samples and (according to them) released all gene sequences.  Hopefully, this is true.