China, Russia and other nations that have long withheld influenza virus samples and DNA sequencing data from the international community are also taking part in the initiative, saying it offers full transparency and, for the first time, basic protection of intellectual property rights. "It think it's wonderful," said Peter Palese, who studies influenza viruses at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, adding it will help researchers ensure the virus isn't mutating to a form that spreads more easily between people, with the potential to kill millions worldwide.

"It goes in the direction of creating a global health conscience," Palese said.

The free, online site (http://platform.gisaid.org) launched Thursday, 18 months after strategic adviser Peter Bogner and 77 influential scientists and health experts wrote a letter to Nature magazine calling for information about bird flu to be shared more quickly and openly, and creating the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data, or GISAID.

Until then, research organizations often kept their own repositories of influenza sequencing data. In the case of bird flu, WHO was keeping crucial information in a private database at a U.S. government laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, making it accessible to just 15 laboratories.

That revelation -- made public by Italian veterinarian and researcher Ilaria Capua in early 2006 -- angered many foreign governments and scientists who said it was dangerous to restrict vital data to a select few. Several boycotted WHO's long-standing virus sharing system, instead depositing important bird flu information into existing but often inadequate public databanks.

"The reluctance by Indonesia, in particular, to share samples and genetic data was of particular concern," Harold Varmus, a Nobel prize winner and one of the signatories to the letter in Nature, said of the country that has been hardest hit by avian influenza.

Many scientists see the sprawling archipelago -- which has tallied nearly half the 240 human deaths recorded worldwide -- as a potential hotspot for a pandemic.

Last November, WHO acknowledged at an intergovernmental meeting that it needed to urgently address the international community's growing misgivings. But it still insists some genetic data needs to be kept behind closed doors and will ask member countries at next week's World Health Assembly to help fund a new Los Alamos-style database.

Many countries are asking if that is necessary, especially with the creation of Thursday's new online site, which has been tailor-made by and for influenza scientists. They include members of WHO's four collaborating centers, who say full transparency will not hinder efforts to carry out their semiannual vaccine strain selection process.

"GISAID has a big head start already," said Nirmal Kumar Ganguly, former director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, adding that its neutral environment has alleviated concerns many developing countries have about sharing genetic data. "I think WHO should consider supporting this platform."

One of the main selling points, he said, was the inclusion of an agreement that requires users to get permission from the data provider before applying for patents needed for vaccines. Scientists also must agree to acknowledge and make an effort to collaborate with the national laboratories that contribute their influenza information.GISAID's platform also offers an electronic tracking system that enables anyone who goes onto the site to see who has sent or received virus samples -- government laboratories, pharmaceutical companies or universities -- something WHO is hoping to do as well.

But even its own scientists say an interim system rushed out by the global body in January was substandard.

"There are terrible problems with the WHO tracking system," one researcher from a WHO collaborating center wrote in an e-mail seen by The Associated Press days after its launch. "We are struggling to correct even the most obvious errors."

Ultimately, the success of the GISAID database will depend on how widely it is embraced by the global community.

It has already landed the biggest coup with Indonesia -- whose controversial health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, became an unlikely hero in the bird flu fight when in January 2007 she decided to buck WHO's 50-year-old virus sharing system, which obliged member countries to submit bird flu samples and data to the global body, saying it was unfair to developing countries.

She said she was worried pharmaceuticals with access to WHO's "secret database" would use Indonesia's virus strains to develop costly vaccines that would ultimately be inaccessible to her own people. Even the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, acknowledged she had a point.

But her decision to withhold virus samples and data from the global body for more than a year triggered a firestorm among international health experts. By making it impossible to see if her country's virus strain was mutating, they said, she could be endangering the planet.

"We have always promoted the sharing of influenza data, all we ask for is that it be done in a fair, transparent and equitable manner," Supari said in explaining her decision to hand over DNA sequencing data for both humans and animals to the new, online site.

"We'll start immediately inputting the new cases," she said.