Ethical implications of flu investigations: the Principle of Global Colaboration

Abstract

Two equipments of investigators headed by Fouchier, in Holland, and Kawaoka, in The United States, has effected modifications in the virus of the avian flu to demonstrate that it can be transmitted by facility between human beings. On having tried to publish his works an intense debate was opened in the scientific community on if the results of the investigations had to spread or not. Finally, the works were published under the protection of a new principle in bioethics, the Principle of Global Collaboration, provided that the results of the investigations could have planetary scope. We will analyze in the present article the sense and scope of the above mentioned principle, and how the polemic generated by these investigations there have staggered the foundations of the scientific ethics.