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The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers from Top Institutions
- sct202 7y agoIt's sad we can't all collaborate together on something as deadly as cancer.
- ancorevard 7y agoThere are lots of successful collaborations happening between US and Chinese scientists. However, like in all scientific disciplines, there some bad apples, and for some, the temptations to improperly share confidential information is too great. Theft of IP is not a good thing, even in oncology.
- eecc 7y agoTheft, IP? Cancer research?! Oh! I can see the facepalms forming a recursively fractal Mandala...
- cwkoss 7y agoAny attempt to enforce intellectual property around cancer research is moral bankruptcy. We should not value the "right to rent seek" over basic human decency and access to life-saving knowledge - ever.
- ccfm 7y agoYou seem to miss the point in the article that there’s no theft happening in this case. The scientist in question is the scientist who had been leading the research.
- agumonkey 7y agoThe economics are getting in the way of science and human care. Maybe there could be another structure to motivate collaboration and sharing of ideas.
- nraynaud 7y agoPurged the Jews, purged the Japanese, purged the Latinos, purging the Chinese...
- sneak 7y agoTrade war. Research purge. Huawei blacklisting. Bloomberg Supermicro smear campaign. Why is public opinion about China being manipulated in the media so decisively? This worries me greatly. Hopefully this is just the military prepping to go attempt to stop the organ harvesting and ethnic cleansing, but who knows. It could also be prep for a DPRK “solution”. The whole thing is gross. It is disgusting that the US government keeps so many variables hidden. This is going to end badly.
- KorematsuFred 7y agoChina is no Iraq or Afganistan. I think USA might have bitten more than they can chew this time with some serious global repercussions.
- rrggrr 7y agohttps://www.modernhealthcare.com/technology/texas-cancer-center-ousts-3-over-chinese-data-theft-concerns https://www.modernhealthcare.com/technology/texas-cancer-cen... https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2173843/china-has-taken-gloves-its-thefts-us-technology https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article... If you think there are hidden variables, you're not well informed.
- threeseed 7y agoChina frankly deserves it. They chose to steal IP from companies on a level never been seen. So of course countries and companies are wary of doing business with them. And many countries have issues with China not just the US.
- ssnistfajen 7y agoExcept the US is being the most overt and also the only one with such a comprehensive media campaign verging on demonization. Doesn't really help that the American mentality is exceptionally suited to receiving such propaganda as truth.
- Supermancho 7y ago
- AimForTheBushes 7y agoCollaboration is a two way street. I feel for Wu in the article and it seems like she puts research over politics, but the fact of the matter still stands: is research being shared fairly? I seem to think not based on past experiences whenever a new virus strains pop up in China they drag their feet on providing samples, if at all [1]. So, if we share our cancer research, which costs billions, with China, can we expect them to return the favor? Or will it be used as leverage? [1] https://www.livescience.com/63448-china-h7n9-flu-samples-pandemic-prevention.html https://www.livescience.com/63448-china-h7n9-flu-samples-pan...
- goodcjw2 7y agoTrade war is one thing, but using trade war to purge an entire ethnic group is a totally different level. Remember those Japanese in concentration camp during WWII? I thought this won't happen again. But now, with those news and comments, I need to reconsider.
- threeseed 7y agoI think you need to go have a lie down. Nobody is being ethnically cleansed.
- DoctorOetker 7y agoHe is not claiming it's happening, he simply states he's no longer certain it won't happen again within our lifetimes...
- goodcjw2 7y agoWell, maybe it's click baiting. But here goes the tag line of the article: "The NIH and the FBI are targeting ethnic Chinese scientists, including U.S. citizens, searching for a cancer cure."
- DoctorOetker 7y agoThe article starts with: >The NIH and the FBI are targeting ethnic Chinese scientists, including U.S. citizens, searching for a cancer cure. So, uhm, ... what 2-way street are we discussing? and how do we deal with people with a single Chinese parent? or 4 Chinese grandparents? ... does it involve measuring skulls as well? this is going over the top...
- testplzignore 7y ago> “Even something that is in the fundamental research space, that’s absolutely not classified, has an intrinsic value,” says Lawrence Tabak, principal deputy director of the NIH, explaining his approach. “This pre-patented material is the antecedent to creating intellectual property. In essence, what you’re doing is stealing other people’s ideas.” Why are the words "patent" and "intellectual property" coming out of the mouth of someone at the NIH? Everything they do should be a public good.
- rdiddly 7y agoI love the word "pre-patented" (i.e. not patented). Totally reminds me of pre-crime. Nationalistic mumbo-jumbo aside, the patent discussion makes it obvious what the real motivations are: it's just another money-grab. "That publicly-funded research is supposed to benefit a small cadre of American pharma rentiers at everyone's expense, not Chinese ones!"
- Barrin92 7y agocalling basic cancer research a pre-patent sounds like calling the laws of physics "pre-IP". What's next, arrest Chinese physicists for smuggling astronomical data out of the US? This American witch-hunt is becoming increasingly ridiculous.
- AlexB138 7y agoPublic to whom? The citizens of the country funding the research, or to those of a country that steals the result?
- ancorevard 7y agoUS tax payers is fronting $28 billion a year for NIH research. There is a lot of IP coming out of that that belongs to them, and not the Chinese Communist Party. There is such a thing as licensing agreements. Again, there are many successful scientific collaborations between US and China so don't be surprised that among some of these scientists there are some with bad characters tempted to share confidential information.
- partiallypro 7y agoI wonder if this is related (well, yes it is partially related to the trade war) to news reports of Chinese research mills that pump out bunk academic papers, even ones that are peer reviewed...which just turn out to be completely fake https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-fraud-scandals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-...
- ccfm 7y agoDon’t trust everything nytimes says about China considering their history of extremely biased and unfair reports on the subject (https://youtu.be/mvpo2jv5eqI https://youtu.be/mvpo2jv5eqI). Coming from an academic background, I actually don’t know how it’s possible to fake your own peer reviews, considering most scientific journals have their own set of trustable reviewers.
- mrguyorama 7y agoThis is a little weird to me. Why purge cancer research? So what if China steals a cure for certain types of cancer and starts making it? Some American company makes slightly less profit? It's not a national security issue, like making sure critical infrastructure is only open to the NSA. It wouldn't even be easy to reimport a "cancer cure" pill from china into the American market. And it's way easier to reverse engineer a drug that china produces from research stolen from the US then it is to do that research in the first place.
- StavrosK 7y ago> Some American company makes slightly less profit? I mean, bingo.
- TheOperator 7y ago>Some American company makes slightly less profit? That's a bingo. Now allow me to morally justify this AMERICA style: "When we allow foreign researchers to steal research from healthcare businesses it reduces the return on investment these businesses make. This has a chilling effect on the amount of Cancer research that can be funded. With less innovation by the world leader in Cancer research ultimately more patients will unnessecarily die and suffer"
- mrguyorama 7y agoBut how much does it actually cost to re-steal that IP back from China? Does America actually respect chinese intellectual property?
- johnchristopher 7y agoRe-stealing the IP isn't as profitable as being the first to market. I guess ?
- agumonkey 7y agoIs the chemo market sensitive to first-to-market effects ?
- hemantv 7y agoI feel like the US is shooting a bullet in its foot here. They did the same with Qian Xuesen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen).
- DoctorOetker 7y agoYes, if there was any "theft" it was the original brain drain, now what is the result? A great epidemiologist moved to China...
- fag_tits 7y agoGood
- mark_l_watson 7y agoI have suspected for a long time that something like this would happen. People in other countries would be hungrier for success than Americans, their kids would study harder in school, workers would be more motivated. In the end, we in the US are struggling to hang on to our “exceptionalism” anyway we can. In my opinion it is too late to fix things because there are too many power and moneyed interests who want to ride our system down into the ground while in the short term maximizing their own benefits. Oh well, so it goes.
- himanshuy 7y agoFound more surprising is that "A month after resigning, she left her husband and two kids in the U.S. and took a job as dean of a school of public health in Shanghai." Why would one do that?
- MaysonL 7y agoIf one found it impossible to get an appropriate-level job in this country, and were offered one in China, one might take it, mightn't one?
- ccfm 7y agoScientist like Wu needs a clean, unbiased, trusting, politics-free environment to do their work. When that environment turns to one of suspicion and discrimination, of course she choose to leave.
- DoctorOetker 7y agoWhat worries me enormously: since when do employers have jurisdiction to approve surveillance over their employees outside of work?? : >In November 2017 the FBI asked for more information. This time, no subpoena followed. Instead, the cancer center’s president, Peter Pisters—then on the job for barely a month—signed a voluntary agreement allowing the FBI to search the network accounts of what a separate document indicated were 23 employees “for any purpose … at any time, for any length of time, and at any location.” Can your employer "voluntarily sign an agreement to permit" (or effectively sign a warrant enabling) the surveillance state to spy on you outside of work contexts? Criticism of the Chinese surveillance state is justified, but before we worry about their surveillance state, perhaps worrying about our own surveillance state would be more in order...
- vajrabum 7y agoAnybody who's hung out at a US university or worked in tech knows that most of the STEM graduate students and professors are immigrants or guests in the US. China and India plus many other countries have been giving a gift to the United States for decades by sending us their best students and yes, of course, it pays back to the countries who send these students, but to the extent this is policy directed enforcement, in my view it mistakes which direction the majority of the benefit has been flowing. None of that is to say that we should allow spying or theft of IP, but let's do recognize that much of the IP we're trying to protect would not exist if the foreigners and immigrants were not in the US in the first place.
- ccfm 7y agoWell said! FBI and NHI are actually doing China a service by forcing these scientists out of the country. The Thousand Talents program was created to attract the best talents back to China, when Chinese government realized they’re losing top talents to US and other countries. Apparently it has failed to attract Wu back twice but these US investigations did the job. If US seriously wants to keep an upper hand in competition with China, it should do its best to keep the best minds here on US, not chase them out.
- NTDF9 7y agoWait, the deal about this funding is that NIH funds, student does research. The topic of where the researcher uses this is different. If the US wanted these researchers to utilize their research by creating American businesses, allow them to become American first and create these businesses here? Why let those scientists now take Chinese funding, do research in China and then buy that product from there? Ultimately, I think the US has shooting itself in the foot if it thinks that money is what tempted those researchers and taking away that money with ethnic targeting will somehow fix trade and IP issues.