Rolex watches, Bridges and H5N1 Samples from China - The Price for Director-General of the WHO?
One thing we know with absolute certainty about how Dr. Chan became Director-General (DG) of the WHO, it had nothing to do with merit. The process of choosing the WHO DG involved a large number of unsavory deals. You can read about some of them here. The crude vote buying that went on can explain why some countries voted for Dr. Chan, but what about the US? Surely our officials have enough Rolex watches.
If the US had supported Dr. Omi, we might have a good DG today. Instead, the US government strongly supported Dr. Chan for DG. Some in flublogia think it might have been quid pro quo - the US supports Dr. Chan and China releases it's samples to the American CDC. Certainly the timing of the release of some samples by China one day after Dr. Chan became DG would be consistent with that hypothesis. If that is the case, we got a bad deal. Chinese scientists are perfectly capable of cherry-picking non-scary samples to send to the CDC.
The only way to really know what's going on there is to allow unfettered access to samples on site. The odious Dr. Jia Youling, Minister of Agriculture and full-time bad guy, says the samples were delayed because he wants to make sure they were safely packaged. Riiiight. Safety-first, is that your motto Dr. Youling? Well, I have a suggestion. Let outside scientists from the US and Europe go to China, collect samples and sequence them on the spot. There are certainly lots of Western scientists in China anyways. Plenty of nice labs. A plus for Sino-American scientific collaboration.
Of course, Dr. Youling couldn't let Dr. Guan Yi of Hong Kong back into his mainland China labs. That would require allowing the release of state secrets. You know, the ones about the H5N1 sequences.
Hmmm. Maybe they won't let American scientists roam the countryside taking samples, after all. Well, we can trust Dr. Youling. Right?
Friday, November 10, 2006