Editorials

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Tell us why HIV bid was nixed

By: Staff Writer

26/01/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

After more than two years of hard work and considerable expense, Winnipeg’s renowned HIV-research community has been told its bid for the federally funded vaccine manufacturing lab has been rejected. It has not yet been told why Ottawa rejected the city’s proposal to host the $88-million plant that was to draw $22 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

More worrisome is the speculation that the federal government may be shelving its commitment to build the plant at all. Four centres submitted proposals: Winnipeg's International Centre on Infectious Diseases, Laval University at Quebec, Trent University's antiviral initiative and the University of Western Ontario. Until last week, the ICID was optimistic -- theirs was a consortium involving the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, as well as universities across Canada and Cangene, Canada's largest biotech company -- due to Winnipeg's wealth of HIV researchers, and its relationship to the national microbiology laboratory on Arlington Street.

The rejection is a huge blow to the city's prospects as the plant would have an operating budget of $20 million and bring some 70 jobs, most in specialized HIV-vaccine production work.

Ottawa's response has been ambiguous -- a spokesman said a notice posted on the website of the Public Health Agency of Canada that the government was not proceeding with the plant was an administrative error. Evading mention of a Canadian plant, the government said it is continuing to work with the Gates Foundation on speeding along vaccine production.

A decision to nix a Canadian vaccine facility would be a blow to the country's work toward an inoculation against the virus that causes AIDS, a disease that continues at epidemic proportions globally, particularly in poor and developing countries. Rates of infection are on the rise in some parts of Canada, including Manitoba.

The public non-profit model for a vaccine plant was intended to take the discoveries of international researchers and turn them into compounds ready for use in trials in human and animal subjects. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's announcement in late 2007 on a vaccine plant was good news for a research community discouraged that same year when a Merck clinical trial was halted out of concern its vaccine prototype had made some subjects susceptible to HIV.

The federal cabinet, including senior Manitoba minister Vic Toews, has refused comment on the Canadian project. Dr. Allan Ronald, professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, who was involved in the Manitoba bid, says that among the four centres about $1 million was invested in vying for the plant. Other officials at ICID say flat out, that if Winnipeg's bid did not win, then no one could have won and the federal government must be axing the program altogether.

The Harper government owes a lot of people a much better account of what has delayed, and perhaps scuttled, a project that was widely regarded as a vital element to the global fight against HIV. Manitoba and those who have worked intimately in the hopes of launching this facility deserve a good answer on what went wrong. Mr. Toews should step forward.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 26, 2010 A10

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