Lawmakers raise concerns about American pharmaceutical companies' participation in clinical trials with China

Washington [US]August 25: Several lawmakers have called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to launch an investigation into American biopharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in Xinjiang, the Special Committee of the Communist Party of China (SCCCP) said in a press release.

In a recent letter to Robert Califf, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Representatives John Moolenaar, chairman of the SCCCP, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, Anna Eshoo, and Neal Dunn expressed serious concerns about the PLA appropriating sensitive intellectual property through these clinical trials. They questioned the ethics of conducting these trials in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government is already implicated in human rights abuses against the Uighur community.

The SCCCP statement said: “Publicly available information on the FDA's website, 'clinicaltrials.gov,' shows that major U.S. biopharmaceutical companies have conducted hundreds of clinical trials jointly with a PLA unit over the past decade. In addition to collaborating with the PLA, lawmakers identified U.S. companies conducting clinical trials in Xinjiang. The CCP is forcing ethnic minorities in Xinjiang to participate in cruel medical procedures that likely overlap with FDA-approved research.”

The SCCCP members also question the accuracy and trustworthiness of the trial results, stating that the clinical trial data in question were generated by PLA institutions overseas. “The FDA has previously declined to approve cancer treatments based on clinical trial data obtained exclusively from clinical trial sites in China. This suggests that the FDA should also subject clinical trials conducted in collaboration with the PLA to similar scrutiny,” the statement said.

The SCCCP's letter to the FDA states: “According to publicly available data on the clinicaltrials.gov website, major U.S. biopharmaceutical companies have conducted hundreds of clinical trials in China over the past decade involving at least one entity with the PLA on behalf of a research study partner. Even today, a major U.S. biopharmaceutical company is actively recruiting patients for a trial of an advanced Alzheimer's drug, collaborating with the PLA General Hospital and Medical School and the PLA Air Force Medical University. Previously, another U.S. biopharmaceutical company used the PLA's 307 Hospital as a site for a cancer therapy clinical trial. The PLA's 307 Hospital is operated directly by the PLA's Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), an entity on the U.S. Department of Commerce's Entity List, which prevents U.S. companies from transferring technology to the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science (AMSS) because it poses a threat to U.S. national security.”

In addition to cooperation with the PLA, the website also lists US biopharmaceutical trials conducted with hospitals in the XUAR. Credible investigative reports have shown that ethnic minorities in the region are repeatedly forced by the CCP to give up their bodily autonomy.

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor.

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