
The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers from Top Institutions - thereare5lights
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u-s-is-purging-chinese-americans-from-top-cancer-research
======
mrguyorama
This 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.

~~~
TheOperator
>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
But how much does it actually cost to re-steal that IP back from China? Does
America actually respect chinese intellectual property?

~~~
johnchristopher
Re-stealing the IP isn't as profitable as being the first to market. I guess ?

~~~
agumonkey
Is the chemo market sensitive to first-to-market effects ?

------
AimForTheBushes
Collaboration 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-
pan...](https://www.livescience.com/63448-china-h7n9-flu-samples-pandemic-
prevention.html)

~~~
DoctorOetker
The 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...

~~~
thebooktocome
The article is unnecessarily inflammatory.

Every example the author gives of a Chinese or Chinese-American academic
investigated by the FBI had prior ties to Chinese gov't run "innovation"
programs. Many of these programs exist solely to transfer (i.e., steal)
foreign IP.

~~~
DoctorOetker
steal?

>Along the way, Wu developed close ties with researchers and cancer centers in
China. She was encouraged to do so by MD Anderson. The center’s president in
the early 2000s, John Mendelsohn, launched an initiative to promote
international collaborations. In China, MD Anderson forged “sister”
relationships with five major cancer centers, cooperating on screening
programs, clinical trials, and basic research studies.

Instead of harassing employees doing their job, or research centers doing
their job, how about if FBI want's to powertrip, they simply individually vote
to make collaboration illegal, and only when it passes the legislative branch
then prosecute? This is just framing people...

~~~
cwkoss
The idea that anyone person or entity should be able to 'own' information
about curing cancer is such a moral abyss.

When someone talks about "stealing" in this context, they are revealing that
they care more about their right to rent seek from the poor than basic human
decency.

~~~
true_religion
Just because an institution seeks to cure cancer, does that mean all their
techniques, trade secrets, and knowledge that is unrelated to a cancer cure is
up for grabs?

No one has cured cancer yet. If you steal from one of these institutions, what
you are stealing definitely isn’t a cancer cure.

------
vajrabum
Anybody 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
Well 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.

------
hemantv
I 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
Yes, if there was any "theft" it was the original brain drain, now what is the
result? A great epidemiologist moved to China...

------
sct202
It's sad we can't all collaborate together on something as deadly as cancer.

~~~
ancorevard
There 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
Theft, IP? Cancer research?!

Oh! I can see the facepalms forming a recursively fractal Mandala...

------
mark_l_watson
I 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.

------
sneak
Trade 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.

~~~
threeseed
China 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.

~~~
yorwba
China may deserve it, but what about individual ethnic Chinese in the US, who
may even have left because of the oppressive political system in the PRC?
Making them collateral damage is pretty shortsighted in my opinion.

~~~
AlexB138
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I'm all for rooting out Chinese IP
thieves and generally think the "trade war" is deserved, but it's absolutely
unacceptable to target an American citizen due to their ethnicity. We can't
sacrifice our ideals out of fear, and especially not for convenience.

~~~
ccfm
Well said.

------
partiallypro
I 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-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-
fraud-scandals.html)

~~~
ccfm
Don’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.

------
DoctorOetker
What 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...

------
NTDF9
Wait, 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.

------
himanshuy
Found 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
If 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?

------
testplzignore
> “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.

~~~
ancorevard
US 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.

~~~
woah
Why are the taxpayers funding confidential research? If that is going on, then
we’ve found the real problem. I’m ok paying for health research that will
benefit me and everyone else. I’m not ok funding secret research that some mid
level beaurocrat will turn into an IP money grab as soon as they step through
the revolving door to the private sector.

~~~
laf21
I believe all biomedical research conducted at the NIH is subject to the
Freedom of Information Act, so I'm not sure confidential is the best term
here.

