Jenkins vindicated - official castigated
Sean Dorney, the Independent, March 29, 1996, page 16.
Travellers on board the south bound international flight out of Port Moresby's Jackson's Airport last Friday must have thought they had an international criminal in their midst. Just before takeoff, one of the passengers, an American citizen, was hauled off the flight by Foreign Affairs officials. She was abused on the tarmac and told she was forbidden to leave PNG.
The subject of this humiliating treatment was Dr Carol Jenkins, the Principal Researcher at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research in Goroka - which, to those not aware of its standing, is a PNG government agency and is one of the few institutions left in this country with a well deserved, world recognised reputation.
What made this Foreign Affairs raid on Carol Jenkins' flight all the more bizarre was that she was on her way to gain PNG a bit more credit. Dr Jenkins had been asked by the World Health Organisation to be the chief resource person and Rapporteur at an international WHO sponsored conference in EI Salvador. She was to have returned to PNG after the conference finished.
Why was she stopped? It's tied up with the extremely complex Hagahai blood virus patent issue. A junior Foreign Affairs official, Dominic Sengi, had apparently convinced somebody more senior in the Department that Carol Jenkins was some sort of 'big pirate' exploiting the Hagahai and attempting to sneak out of the country. The incident at the airport led others (such as the President of the National Doctors Association) to add on the assumed allegation that she was smuggling out biological specimens. What rot!
Dominic Sengi, a former journalist, has written a lot on the Hagahai patent issue. Indeed,
in the eyes of some outsiders including foreign NGOs campaigning against the patenting of human genes, Sengi has become a PNG government spokesman. There has even been speculation that PNG will join a Canadian based NGO, RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) in taking a case to the World Court on the legality of human genetic patents.
Richard Shears, the Australian based correspondent for the London Daily Mail, visited the Highlands to write about the Hagahai issue. Sengi became one of his sources: "Dominic Sengi, of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, was so angry that he privately worked for six months investigating what had happened. 'I am left in no doubt that this is a form of biological prospecting' he says. 'We must be on our guard biological bounty hunters who are continually searching for novel, non-obvious and useful discoveries to support their industries back home'".
Sengi has directed much of his anger at Carol Jenkins because her signature appears on a United States patent over a virus called Human T-Lymphotropic Virus-1 (HTLV-1) derived from the blood of a man from the Hagahai tribe. The Hagahai who lived in the remote mountains up the back of the Madang province made themselves known to outsiders only as recently as the early 1980s - which led to the inevitable 'lost tribe' stories in the world's media.
Dr Jenkins began work with the Hagahai way back then. She was already employed by the PNG Medical Research Institute as an anthropologist. And she's been working with them ever since. The image, therefore, portrayed of her flying into a Hagahai village in a helicopter, taking their blood and flying out again with the intention of making huge profits in America does not stand up to any proper scrutiny.
The Director of PNG's Institute of Medical Research, Dr Michael Alpers, recently attempted to set the record straight over Dr Jenkins' involvement in the patenting of the HTLV-1 virus in the United States: "There has been a lot of confusion over this matter, some involving human genetics, the Human Genome Project and the Human Genome Diversity Project. The Hagahai issue has nothing to do with any of these. It concerns a virus called HTLV-1. This virus causes a form of cancer and a form of paralysis many countries of the world.
"These diseases are quite rare but are nevertheless important because they may be spread through blood transfusions (and in this respect they are like AIDS). We have known for some time that the virus infection is common in PNG but the diseases seem to be completely absent.
"After a lot of effort the virus was isolated through collaboration with colleagues at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. This discovery revealed that the HTLV-1 virus in PNG is a variant of the cosmopolitan virus, which may explain why it does not cause disease here.
"The likelihood of any commercial benefit from this discovery is very slight, but it could conceivably be used to develop a test for the Melanesian HTLV-1 variant virus or a vaccine against the world-wide: cosmopolitan strain. On the basis of these remote possibilities, following the instructions of the US Government to their scientists at the National Institutes of Health regarding patents, our colleagues filed a patent for the genetic information they discovered about the virus.
"Otherwise all profits, if any commercial development did subsequently arise, would go to the commercial company which exploited the discovery. Since the original isolate came from Hagahai man in PNG the Hagahai were mentioned in. the patent application. The other reason for mentioning the Hagahai was to ensure they would benefit if in the remote future some commercial development arose from the discovery.
"So, despite that exploitation may have taken place around the world in this particular case the rights of the Hagahai are specifically safeguarded...(and) given that the patent application, was being made in the US it was better, I believe, to have made the Hagahai part of it than to have taken the ethical stance not to be involved and to have allowed all the rights to reside in the US".
Dr Jenkins spent an apprehensive few days wondering if dark rumours of her threatened deportation would prove correct. The Hagahai came to her support and when she was called on Wednesday to see the Foreign Affairs Secretary, Gabriel Dusava, three Hagahai people accompanied her. It's fortunate that PNG has in Gabriel Dusava a secretary who is swayed more by a sensible consideration of the facts than by emotion charged allegations of big piracy and exploitation.
After their meeting, Mr Dusava issued a statement saying Dr Jenkins' research visa was intact and that she was "entitled to move freely in and out of the country to conduct her research" and deal with institutions both here and overseas. "The session with Dr Jenkins was most useful," he said, "her work has now been put into proper perspective.
"I must say that a much better appreciation of the arrangements under which the research is being carried out has been established; It is also clear that this research has been done with the full consent of the Hagahai people as well as approval from the PNG Medical Research Institute and that the benefit of this research, when fully realised, will be shared among all concerned."
Mr Dusava agreed with what Dr Alpers has been saying for some months - that there is a need to work out a policy in PNG to cover this most complex issue of patenting biological information. "Understanding was reached today," Secretary Dusava said, "on the need for close government and research personnel cooperation in sensitive areas of research like human blood and viruses where formal frameworks are not available to set principles and regulations."
"It was also apparent," he said, "that the lack of appropriate patent law to regulate research and ownership of results of such research, including in viruses in blood, plant and traditions has made it difficult for the present research arrangements regarding Hagahai people to be coordinated locally and internationally."
Mr Dusava said a brief on the meeting was being put together for the Prime Minister to direct what action should be taken. Dr Alpers has proposed that the Medical Research Institute host a seminar at the University of PNG in August to raise public awareness and help establish guidelines.
Had the meeting between Dr Jenkins and Secretary Dusava turned out differently and resulted in her deportation the reputation of Papua New Guinea would have taken another battering., Happily it did not. And what section of the Foreign Affairs Department has Dominic Sengi spent most of his time working in you may wonder? It's public relations.