(Vials of H5N1 flu vaccine by Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. are seen during production at Sinovac facilities in Beijing, Nov.24, 2011. To publish and what to publish? Those will be the questions on the table when the World Health Organization convenes a special meeting next week about controversial bird flu studies. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Andy Wong)

To publish and what to publish? Those will be the questions on the table when the World Health Organization convenes a special meeting next week about controversial bird flu studies.

The meeting will be small, with only 22 invitees from outside the WHO, senior communications staff of the Geneva-based global health agency said.

Potentially among them will be representatives of the Vietnamese and Indonesian laboratories that provided the original viruses on which the research was done.

People looking for solutions to broader issues such as whether and where similar research should be conducted in future may need to dial down their expectations for the meeting.

"In this first meeting, we've got to sort out the deadlock, I think, that we're in with the scientific community. I don't think anyone anticipates that to happen very quickly," says Christy Feig, the WHO's director of communications.

The session, to be held Feb. 16 and 17 at the WHO's headquarters, will focus on the most basic problems that have arisen as a result of the controversy. In essence: Should the two papers at the heart of the dispute be published? In full or in abbreviated form? If they must be abbreviated, which sections must be held back?

That disclosure suggests the tentative agreement on the part of the research teams and the journals involved to publish only redacted versions is not yet set in stone.

In fact, the belief in Geneva is that the distance between the meeting participants is wide. As a result, expectations for how much can be achieved next week are the opposite.

"The focus is very narrow," Feig said from Geneva. "There's only so much ground you can cover in two days."

The controversy relates to two studies, done by Dutch and American researchers, which reportedly show how H5N1 flu viruses could be made to spread like seasonal flu viruses among ferrets. Such viruses could not be tested in humans and ferrets are considered the best - though not foolproof - animal model for predicting how flu viruses will act in people.

A U.S. panel of biosecurity experts is urging that the studies not be published in full, arguing the details of how the work was done would be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Invitations to the meeting are directed to individuals in some cases. In others, they have been issued to an institution that is playing a role in the controversy.

Representatives of the Vietnamese and Indonesian labs that provided the source viruses have not yet indicated whether they'll attend, Feig said.

Vietnam provided viruses to Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison while Ron Fouchier, of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, received his viruses from Indonesia.

Their inclusion is a nod on the WHO's part to the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework, a multi-country agreement forged after years of painful negotiations. The framework, ratified last spring, is meant to ensure countries that share viruses with foreign scientists in turn will share in the benefits that flow from that research.

The talks that led to the framework were triggered by a 2007 move by Indonesia to stop sharing H5N1 viruses with the broader world unless it was guaranteed access to pandemic vaccine and other benefits.

While the transfer of viruses from Vietnam and Indonesia to the American and Dutch labs occurred well before the PIP agreement was put in place, the WHO wants to observe the spirit of that agreement going forward, said spokesperson Gregory Hartl.

The director of the U.S. scientific agency that funded the research - Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases - will be there. So too will be a representative of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, the expert panel charged by the U.S. government with reviewing potential dual-use research, legitimate science that could be put to illegitimate use.

Others attending the meeting will be the researchers themselves, people who reviewed the research proposals to see if they triggered dual-use concerns (both when the work was in the proposal stage and when the studies were being readied for publication) and representatives of the journals Science and Nature, which plan to publish the studies.

At least several of the directors of laboratories in the network of WHO collaborating labs for influenza have been invited and are expected to attend.

A list of the participants and their declarations of interest will be posted on the WHO website the day the meeting begins. Hartl said the list can only be posted after the meeting participants formally go through and accept one another's declarations of interests.

One of the conditions the researchers and journals made before tentatively agreeing to redact the studies was that the full details of how the work was done would be shared with other scientists and public health officials on a need-to-know basis.

The system for doing that - vetting applications to see the work, figuring out how to share the material - has not yet been devised. And that work probably won't happen at this meeting, said Feig, adding that people with the expertise needed to set up that type of system won't be in the room.

The WHO has repeatedly said that it envisages helping to organize a second meeting with broader goals and wider international involvement after this initial gathering is completed. Hartl said that is still the plan, but planning won't begin until this meeting occurs.