Lawmakers: Big Pharma Might Be Cashing In On Experiments On Chinese Slaves

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A group of House lawmakers has urgently called upon the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate American biopharmaceutical companies that conducted clinical trials in Xinjiang, China, where millions of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have faced persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

The group of bipartisan representatives, led by House Select Committee on the CCP Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and the committee’s ranking member, Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf last Monday. The letter pointed out that based on publicly available data, major U.S. biopharmaceutical companies have conducted hundreds of clinical trials in China for at least 10 years, a practice that raises three primary concerns: national security, data integrity, and human rights violations.

First, most of these clinical trials involved at least one entity associated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). For example, the lawmakers wrote that one American biopharmaceutical company conducted a cancer therapeutic clinical trial at the 307 Hospital, controlled and operated by the PLA’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS). Notably, the U.S. government has blacklisted AMMS on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List due to national security concerns.

The lawmakers are deeply concerned that the involvement of PLA entities in clinical trials poses a significant risk of either “critical Intellectual Property (IP) being transferred to the PLA or being co-opted under the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC).” Essentially, these U.S. companies have undermined their own competitiveness and endangered national security by partnering with the PLA-affiliated entities.

Second, clinical trial data from China is notoriously unreliable. An investigation in China revealed that fraudulent practices in clinic trials were widespread, with a staggering 80 percent of data being fabricated. This poses a significant risk to American patients, as biopharmaceutical companies that rely on such data may inadvertently develop or fine-tune health-care products and services that could harm rather than help.

The FDA’s previous decisions to decline treatments based solely on Chinese clinical trial data underscore the gravity of this issue. Therefore, these U.S. lawmakers suggest that the FDA should impose similar scrutiny on clinical trial work done in cooperation with the PLA, a measure that could provide much-needed reassurance to the public.

Third, it is disturbing that some of the clinical trials were set in hospitals located in Xinjiang (XUAR), where the Uyghur Muslim population and other ethnic minorities in the region have been subjected to the CCP’s brutal, government-led, systematic ethnic cleansing for at least a decade.

Uyghur Muslims’ religious sites and cultural heritage have been bulldozed and erased. More than 1 million Uyghur Muslims and other minorities (the majority of whom have committed no crimes) were subjected to mass incarceration. A new report by Yale University estimates that the Uyghur Muslim population in China is collectively facing a cumulative 4.4 million years of imprisonment as the result of the Communist Party’s legalized repression. 

After erasing the Uyghurs’ cultural and ethnic identity, destroying their homeland, and separating families and loved ones, the CCP still wants to squeeze out the last drop of the economic value of every Uyghur Muslim. Those who “survived” internment camps still cannot get their freedom and dignity back. Some were reportedly transferred to various factories inside and outside Xinjiang as forced laborers.

Ethan Gutmann, a research fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, testified in March this year at a congressional hearing that Chinese medical authorities, in the words of Radio Free Asia, “are collecting genetic data from the country’s Muslim Uyghur minority as part of a forced organ-transplant program marketed to Muslim medical tourists from Gulf states.”

This troubling evidence suggests that Uyghurs do not have bodily autonomy under the iron fist of the CCP. U.S. lawmakers argue that U.S. companies “could be unintentionally profiting from the data derived from clinical trials during which the CCP forced victim patients to participate.” The profound ethical implications of such involvement cannot be ignored.

These concerns have prompted urgent action from lawmakers, who have called on the FDA to “take on a greater role in protecting U.S. national security interests.” They have set a deadline of Oct. 1 for the agency to provide answers to a list of questions, including the number of FDA-reviewed clinical trial works that involved PLA-owned, operated, or affiliated facilities and whether the agency has ever notified any U.S. biopharmaceutical organization that it has conducted studies with the PLA or in the XUAR.

While the lawmakers’ letter was addressed to the FDA, U.S. biopharmaceutical companies should take it as a warning as the lawmakers reminded these companies that “the United States is engaged in a fierce competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in biotechnology. This competition will not only have implications for our national and economic security, but also for the future of healthcare and the security of American medical data.”

The potential harm to our national and economic security is a matter of grave concern, and it is both appalling and shortsighted that U.S. biomedical companies continue to work with PLA entities and profit from the Uyghur Muslims’ suffering. If these companies genuinely strive for scientific integrity, care about saving lives, and are willing to stand up for human rights, they must now end these clinical trials in China.