Most of us are paid to protect human and animal health, if publishing one more paper becomes more important, we have our priorities messed up.

This was the forceful argument put forward by Ilaria Capua in the debate on how to balance global health against scientists’ needs to publish and countries’ demands for secrecy.¹ Capua, from the Instituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezia has asked for the release of all sequence data for the H5N1 avian influenza strain into the public domain.

Collaboration and sharing of research resources are key issues in the development of science at all levels. However, any call for the unconditional sharing of data hastens a debate with recurrent economic, political and ideological components. In the public health field, collaboration among researchers, groups or countries needs to be more frequent, as, in theory, all of us accept human health as the first priority in our work and the search for effective …