Avian Flu, Intellectual Property

Over at marginalrevolution.com, a blog I read daily almost religiously, there's an interesting post up about how Indonesia has stopped sending samples of the avian flu virus to the World Health Organization because it's negotiating some kind of contract with a pharmaceutical company. Tyler concludes, "If this entire episode does not convince you that IP law is out of control, I don't know what would." Which is really saying something, since he's got a pretty libertarian take on things... As they say, read the whole thing.

I myself was totally convinced that IP law, at least in the US, is out of control when I saw this a few months ago. Read it, laugh a bit, and may be weep.

In other news, BBC reports an Egyptian teenager just died with avian flu...