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Kuwait City - As the world battles the pharmaceutical giants to cut the costs of AIDS drugs for poorer countries, the most promising research on a possible AIDS vaccine continues to be conducted amid acrimony over the issue of patenting.
"Ironically it is the most promising search for an HIV/AIDS cure," says Dr Alfred Nderitu of University of Nairobi in Kenya.
Months after it emerged that British scientists Dr Thomas Hanke and Prof Andrew McMichael applied to the British Patent Office as inventors of the vaccine and excluded the University of Nairobi team -- Prof Jeckoniah Ndinya Achola, Dr Omu Anzala and microbiology department head Dr Job Bwayo -- who collaborated with them, bitter Kenyan scientists agree on one thing: not to talk about the issue again.
"None of the Kenyan scientists are interested in further pursuit of the matter," says Norah Olembo, director of Kenya Industrial Properties Organisation, the body that oversees patents registration. "They want to concentrate on their work."
When the row emerged in mid-October last year it almost halted the research project funded by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), a scientific non-government organisation that provided $9.1 million for the joint effort between the University of Nairobi and the Medical Research Council in Oxford, Britain.
The...