China is accused of collecting genetic data of millions of pregnant women in Europe and Asia and storing some of it in China’s National Genebank possibly to study changing traits in populations, a Reuters Investigation has revealed. The test is taken in early pregnancy and the data is stored in China. Subjecting the data to analysis for questionable ends cannot be ruled out. Immediately after the Reuters report, the United States saw the Chinese company’s efforts to collect the human gene data for analysis as a national security threat.
China has denied the accusations but has not been able to explain several key questions. The women take a prenatal test developed by BGI Group, a Chinese genome sequencing company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Reuters comes up with a startling revelation that BGI Group collaborated with the People’s Liberation Army to develop and improve the test. China has faced criticism of accessing similar data to conduct tests on quality human life. BGI has been marketing the test – named NIFTY – abroad since 2013. Over eight million women the world over have taken the test so far. Reuters says BGI uses leftover blood samples sent to its laboratory in Hong Kong as well as the genetic data for its population research. The test that captures “DNA from the placenta in the woman’s bloodstream” is marketed “in at least 13 European Union countries, including Germany, Spain and Denmark, as well as in Britain, Canada, Australia, Thailand, India and Pakistan”.
Reuters says they are, however, not sold in the United States. China has a regulation that genetic sequences from tests on Chinese women are stored for three years, after which the women can request that the data is deleted. The data collected from foreign women is storied for five years. Reuters found “no evidence BGI violated patient privacy agreements or regulations” but “the privacy policy on the NIFTY test’s website says data collected can be shared when it is ‘directly relevant to national security or national defense security’ in China”. However, Reuters “found no evidence BGI violated patient privacy agreements or regulations”. Responding to the revelations, BGI said it "has never been asked to provide — nor provided — data from its NIFTY tests to Chinese authorities for national security or national defence purposes". The US National Counterintelligence and Security Center says the NIFTY’s privacy policy is questionable: "Non-invasive prenatal testing kits marketed by Chinese biotech firms serve an important medical function, but they can also provide another mechanism for the People's Republic of China and Chinese biotech companies to collect genetic and genomic data from around the globe," the centre said. It is now learnt that BGI has been working with Chinese military hospitals to study the genomes of foetuses since 2010 and has published more than a dozen joint studies with PLA researchers.
It is revealed that a 2018 BGI study analysed the data to identify viruses present in Chinese women and single out Tibetan and Uyghur minorities to find links between their genes and their characteristics. What is most worrying is that apart from the genetic information of the woman taking the test, the process also captures personal information. The Reuters report quotes the concerns raised by US government advisors over BGI Group amassing the genetic data: “As science pinpoints new links between genes and human traits, access to the biggest, most diverse set of human genomes is a strategic edge. The technology could propel China to dominate global pharmaceuticals, and also potentially lead to genetically enhanced soldiers, or engineered pathogens to target the U.S. population or food supply, the advisors said.”
Reuters reviewed more than 100 documents, from research papers to marketing materials, to determine the scope of data being captured by BGI through its prenatal tests, how it is using this in its research and its military collaboration. “The data offer insight into foreign populations as well as China’s own. Computer instructions that BGI uses to process the NIFTY data show it collects a wide range of information about customers besides their genetic code. This includes the women’s country, medical history and the sex of the fetus, according to the instructions, reviewed by Reuters on a programmers’ forum online.” The BGI company was in the news when the Covid-19 pandemic surfaced last year after it sold of donated “millions of COVID-19 test kits and gene-sequencing labs outside China”. Reuters says “US security agencies warned this was part of an effort to collect large amounts of foreign genetic material”.
The critical information in the Reuters report is that while BGI says its Covid-19 tests “do not collect patient DNA”, “its prenatal tests do”. The report reveals: “Inside BGI’s offices in mainland China, huge screens update in real time as samples harvested from the tests of pregnant Chinese women are uploaded to the China National GeneBank, according to a scientist who has been inside the Shenzhen facility and photographs published in Chinese state media. The screens also show the location of the women.” Reuters also nails a BGI lie that the bank does not contain data of women from outside China.
“However, online records reviewed by Reuters show that the genetic data of at least 500 women who have taken the NIFTY test, including some outside China, are stored in the government-funded China National GeneBank.” The report confirms: “…the GeneBank website acknowledges the ‘NIFTY database’ as among its ‘rich sources of biological data’.” How exactly is the genetic data in BGI’s hands a threat? The Reuters report says gene sequencing technology is expanding worldwide and so has the scope of non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPT). It quotes scientists as saying that the “technology would unlock patterns of genetic variations in populations around the world”.
This means, according to a scientist, “in the future…it may be possible to reconstruct what a person looks like from an NIPT test.” From there to unravelling population secrets is but a small step. “Large genomic datasets can be used to design disease therapies, yet they also expose genetic vulnerabilities in a population; an adversary could exploit a susceptibility to disease in a targeted genetic attack, a report to the US Director of National Intelligence by science and medical experts warned last year.”
