Science with borders: A debate over genetic sequences and national rights threatens to inhibit research

There is something that is weighing heavily on the minds of some infectious diseases scientists these days. It’s not the challenging Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, though that is deeply concerning. It’s not a new flu virus or slashed research budgets or laboratory safety violations.

It’s an international treaty. More specifically, it’s an agreement within a treaty that could, depending on how negotiations play out, make it extraordinarily difficult to conduct disease surveillance or forge research collaborations around the world.

The agreement — known as the Nagoya Protocol — could drown researchers in oceans of paperwork and hobble the world’s scientists when they must next race to combat a new disease disaster, some fear.

The protocol is part of the Convention on Biodiversity, an international treaty aimed at protecting each country’s control over its own biological resources. It lays out ways by which biological resources may be shared and the benefits of those resources be distributed.

But since the protocol came into force in October 2014, debate has raged about whether