Influenza researchers are complaining that the poor sharing of data by the US disease-control agency is hindering their work. Still reeling from accusations that his administration was unprepared for the hurricane that hit New Orleans last month, Presi- dent George W. Bush called last week for an international partnership on influenza that would require countries facing an outbreak to share immediately information and samples with the World Health Organization (WHO). But investigations by Nature have revealed widespread concern that too few of the flu data collected by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta are made generally available. Experts say research would speed up if the CDC's influenza branch threw open its databases of virus sequences and immunological and epidemiological data.
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