Scientists working at Canada’s highest-security infectious-disease laboratory have been collaborating with Chinese military researchers to study and conduct experiments on deadly pathogens.
Seven scientists in the special pathogens unit at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg and Chinese military researchers have conducted experiments and co-authored six studies on infectious diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever and Rift Valley fever. The publication dates of the studies range from early 2016 to early 2020.
The Globe and Mail has also learned that one of the Chinese researchers, Feihu Yan, from the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Academy of Military Medical Sciences, worked for a period of time at the Winnipeg lab, a Level 4 facility equipped to handle some of the world’s deadliest diseases. This researcher is credited as a co-author on all six of the papers. However, on two of them, he is listed as being affiliated with both the Winnipeg lab and the military medical academy.
Two of the Winnipeg lab scientists, Xiangguo Qiu and her biologist husband, Keding Cheng, were fired in January of this year after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, as The Globe reported last week, recommended that their security clearances be removed on national-security grounds. CSIS had also been concerned about the nature of information Dr. Qiu might have passed on to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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Andy Ellis, former CSIS assistant director of operations, said it is “madness” for the Public Health Agency of Canada to be co-operating with the PLA, which in recent years has ramped up its recruitment of scientists and invested heavily in medical research as part of its strategy to modernize its military.
“It is ill-advised. It is the top lab in Canada,” Mr. Ellis said in an interview. “It is just incredible naiveté on their part.”
Mr. Ellis said it is also astounding that PHAC allowed a PLA scientist into the Winnipeg lab that requires the highest-level security clearance to gain entry.
“We won’t let a Canadian in unless we have done a deep background check, but we let [someone] in that we don’t know anything about. It doesn’t make sense,” he added.
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James Giordano, a professor in the departments of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University and a senior fellow in biowarfare and biosecurity at the U.S. Naval War College, said he assumes research conducted by any academic working in China is available for use by Beijing for military or defence purposes.
He said China is interested in developing new bioweapons, but also to furthering the capacity for what he calls “heroic rescue,” where Beijing is able to “ride in like a white knight” and offer other countries treatments or cures for diseases that threaten their population and increase its international influence.
Prof. Giordano said China is particularly interested in modifying pathogens to create a novel organism that is not listed – and therefore not regulated – in the international Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
It makes sense to those who admire China’s basic dictatorship. Perfect sense.
