Alan Sipress - The Fatal Strain

When the two women met next, in November 2007, the Indonesian minister was coming off her impassioned speech in Geneva’s Palais des Nations. The jet lag and drama were taking their toll. “I was exhausted,” she recounted. But at the moment, it was Chan she pitied. “I knew I made her feel uneasy,” Supari later said. “My move had made her tremendously busy.”

Supari steeled herself for their private encounter, telling herself to be strong. The two women hugged tightly. Then they started in, speaking in little more than whispers.

Chan urged the minister to trust her.

She did, Supari answered. “But I don’t trust the WHO system.”

Chan appealed for understanding, explaining that she and Heymann were trying to transform the antiquated system they’d inherited. She needed Supari’s help to do it.

Supari was struck by Chan’s apparent good will. But the minister refused to bow. “I tell you once again, Madame Chan, my trust in the WHO will resume only if they materialize a new mechanism which is equitable and transparent. We, the Third World, have long been suffering from the inequity, Madame Chan. It is time to change.” Supari felt compassion for Chan, an Asian sister who she believed had been forced to do the bidding of rich, powerful countries like the United States. “She was a brave warrior, like me, actually,” Supari thought. “But she had to give up her principles, her conscience, to keep her position in the WHO.”

The minister apologized, repeating that Indonesia would not compromise on its demands.

“I need a total and fundamental transformation, Madame Chan. And I will continue to speak about this all over the world,” she continued. “I am your friend and I do not deliberately put you into this difficult position. However, the bigger concern of humanity made me do this. I am very sorry, Madame Chan.”

The dispute metastasized much as senior WHO officials had feared. The distrust engendered by the clash over virus sample sharing and associated benefits infected other facets of the effort to contain bird flu. Moreover, during 2008 and on into 2009, Indonesia’s grievance grew into a crippling distraction. Jakarta continued to press its campaign on behalf of the world’s underprivileged while largely ignoring a virus that was assiduously putting down ever deeper roots across the Indonesian archipelago. Other governments were entangled in the diplomatic quarrel with Indonesia while frittering away years crucial for their own pandemic preparations.

As the negotiations dragged on, the United States became Indonesia’s main interlocutor. In their respective capitals, the thinking was that if two governments that were so far apart on the issue could find a resolution, everyone else would agree. But other countries, such as Brazil, India, and Thailand, were now starting to agitate for sovereign control over their viruses, suggesting that a deal with Indonesia alone would no longer settle the matter. At the same time, the disagreement between Washington and Jakarta was becoming ever more shrill. Then Supari released her book.

In early 2008 she published It’s Time for the World to Change: In the Spirit of Dignity, Equity, and Transparency, Divine Hand Behind Avian Influenza . Drawn from her diary, the book was a blistering critique of the industrialized world and WHO’s global system for virus sharing. The most sensational attack was saved for the United States: her claim in the first chapter that the U.S. government could use bird flu samples to fashion weapons of mass destruction. Her evidence was that genetic data from some virus samples was stored in a database at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a U.S. government lab that conducts advanced research on such diverse subjects as national security, climate change, traffic management, and disease dynamics.

“It was the same laboratory that designed the atomic bomb to destroy Hiroshima in 1945,” Supari wrote. “It is likely that they utilize the same facility to research and develop chemical weapons. What a terrifying fact! The DNA sequence data had been the privilege for the scientists in Los Alamos. Whether they used it to make vaccine or develop chemical weapon would depend on the need and the interest of the U.S. government.”

The notion that the United States would weaponize bird flu is ludicrous to most Americans. “I think it’s the nuttiest idea I ever heard,” quipped U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. But in developing countries, some were inclined to believe the worst, and in some quarters of Jakarta, Supari’s book got a rapturous reception.

The dispute over virus sharing also spilled over into negotiations over the status of the NAMRU lab. The U.S. and Indonesian governments, which were quietly discussing a new agreement to authorize its activities, had been hung up over the finite question of how many U.S. personnel at the lab would be accorded diplomatic immunity. Full of fury, Supari abruptly announced in 2008 that it was time to expel the lab altogether. “NAMRU-2’s presence is of no use to us,” she averred in June of that year. “In fact, its operations are an encroachment on our country’s sovereignty.” She urged the Indonesian parliament to close it down. One lawmaker called for a probe into reports circulating among Indonesians that the navy lab was a front for spying. The fate of the most advanced disease lab in Indonesia grew even more uncertain.

Next Supari disclosed that the government would no longer announce human cases of bird flu on a routine basis as before. Days after she made that declaration in June 2008, she assured me Indonesia would still report the cases to WHO. But no more would the government release details to the public with each new infection. “The families of victims of avian flu have very, very fresh wounds,” she explained, and the practice of announcing cases had been “very insensitive to them.”

Maybe so. But yet another source of vital intelligence had been choked off. Indonesia had severed the supply of virus samples to the world’s labs. It had shut down the one lab inside the country capable of fully analyzing specimens. And now the government had deprived flu hunters, and Indonesians themselves, of information needed to confront a budding epidemic. Supari promised that all details would be released in time. But time is the most precious commodity when it comes to flu.

The fracture between haves and have-nots now yawned wide. Even as the novel strain increasingly marked its territory in Indonesia, the world became ever less able to chart its progress.

The figures first appeared on the ridgeline. They emerged one after another from behind a bluff in the middle distance, more than a dozen of them. Then, like ants, they started down a dirt track hewn from the lush, sculpted mountains separating Vietnam from China. The descent was steep, the footing treacherous. The slopes above were densely forested. But the trail itself was broad and exposed, the deep brown earth well trampled. As the smugglers drew closer, their stooped forms became visible in the afternoon light. Their backs heaved under the weight of their freight. Soon the cargo came into view. They were hauling bamboo cages crammed with live, bootleg chickens.

On the paved road below, two young men waited, mounted on a pair of red dirt bikes. They were lookouts. My Vietnamese driver had pulled our car to the side so I could check out the foot traffic coming over the border. Now, as I stood beside the guardrail, staring past a cornfield up into the craggy cliffs, I was the one being checked out. The two sentinels revved their engines and brazenly approached, slowing briefly as they buzzed by. Several dozen yards away, they stopped their bikes. One man produced a two-way radio and barked into it. Though his words were inaudible to my translator and me, within moments the figures on the slopes above began to shift to the edge of the track and melt into the surrounding brush. Yet almost instantly, more traffickers appeared over the ridge from China. Even more were bounding down a second path about a hundred yards to the left. This trail was narrower, largely concealed by banana palms and other trees. These smugglers apparently figured I couldn’t see them and continued their progress undeterred by the alarm.