Should the United States Hide Its Cancer Research From China?
In early spring 2019 National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued warning to the U.S. medical centers about “systematic efforts by foreign nations to steal intellectual property”. It followed the warning issued to the U.S. academic institutions by the FBI: “China: The Risk to Academia”, https://www.research.psu.edu/sites/default/files/FBI_Risks_To_Academia.pdf . On June 5, the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency held hearing on “Foreign Threats to Taxpayer Funded Research: Oversight Opportunities and Policy Solutions, https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Speech/2019/190605rodi.pdf.
The FBI, NIH, and ICE warnings triggered massive investigation of ethnic Chinese faculty throughout the country. It involved searches of their email accounts and correspondence, monitoring of the phone calls, and video surveillance. Positions (including tenured faculty appointments) of some prominent Chinese-American scientists have been terminated without due process. Their students and laboratories have been left in limbo, https://concernedscientists.org/2019/07/u-s-government-profiling-ethnic-chinese-scientists/.
An alarming series of recent cases have arisen against ethnic Chinese scientists that work on cancer or are involved in cancer-related biomedical research. In April of this year, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, dismissed 3 scientists for alleged undisclosed ties to China, https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/three-researchers-ousted-from-md-anderson-65772.
These dismissals were preceded by the NIH investigation leading to the resignation in January 2019 of Dr. Xifeng Wu from her position of the Director of the Center for Public Health and Markus Chair in Cancer Prevention at MD Anderson, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u-s-is-purging-chinese-americans-from-top-cancer-research. In March 2019 she moved to Zhejiang University in China to become the Dean of School of Public Health.
Last May, the School of Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta terminated two tenured professors, neuroscientists Li Xiao-Jiang and Li Shihua. No official reason has been given and no internal hearing has been held. Students that worked in the laboratories of the professors, who came from China on student visas, were given one month to leave the United States, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/terminated-emory-researcher-disputes-university-s-allegations.
The NIH receives close to $40 billion annually from the U.S. government. National Cancer Institute, which is a part of the NIH, receives close to $6 billion. Research conducted at the NIH contributes to the development of a multitude of drug candidates. Dozens become new drugs produced annually by the U.S. pharmaceutical companies and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329.
This year Merck alone will generate over $10 billion from its top cancer drug Keytruda, https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/merck-2q-earnings-crushes-estimates-massive-growth-cancer-drug-keytruda-2019-7-1028398519. NIH researchers contributed prominently to the development of Keytruda (pembrolizumab), https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/06/20/precision-oncology-gene-changes-predict-immunotherapy-response/. It is clear that their work has saved lives and has helped generate additional revenue for the government from Merck’s profits.
It is also clear that leaking to China the advances made in cancer research by the NIH would benefit Chinese pharmaceutical companies, resulting in lost profits by the U.S. companies and decreased revenue for the U.S. government.
However, given that over 600,000 people die of cancer annually in the United States, https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics, it is far from obvious that the effort of the NIH to remove top scientists who might have purposely or inadvertently leaked information about U.S. cancer research to China benefits the American taxpayer. The investigations and terminations will undoubtedly result in the exodus of the best ethnic Chinese scientists from the United States.
Together with losing top cancer researchers, U.S. universities are also losing best Chinese students. Concerned about new visa restrictions they are questioning benefits from receiving education in the United States, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/china-s-scientists-alarmed-bewildered-growing-anti-chinese-sentiment-united-states. China is not what it used to be 30 years ago. Many Chinese research laboratories possess state-of-the-art equipment. Universities offer competitive salaries to their professors and provide modern educational environments for their students.
The idea that science innovations flow one way from the U.S. to China, promulgated in some circles of the U.S. government, is completely outdated. It has led to human rights abuses and is negatively affecting U.S. universities and research centers. In recent years a number of espionage cases brought against ethnic Chinese scientists fell apart and resulted in multi-million lawsuits against the U.S. government.
The Chinese American community has responded to the investigations of ethnic Chinese researchers by holding conferences across the United States. Members of the community at large, prominent lawyers, representatives of the FBI and human rights organizations participated in the events. One such forum took place in Chicago in March 2019, https://ucausa.org/uca-il-forum-a-new-reality-facing-chinese-americans/. The other was held by China Institute in New York last June, https://www.chinainstitute.org/event/new-normal-perils-chinese-scientist-engineer-u-s/.
The U.S. government must recognize that nowadays China is a major source of science innovations and a giant force in biomedical research. This research does not produce weapons and does not help countries to achieve technological superiority. If there is any area in which the two leading world powers can cooperate for the benefit of humanity, fighting cancer is the one.
Eugene Chudnovsky, https://www.lehman.edu/academics/physics-astronomy/fac-chudnovsky.php, and Alexander Greer, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/chem/agreer/FirstPage.html, are Co-Chairs of the Committee of Concerned Scientists, https://concernedscientists.org/