Thread by @suilee

Sometime last year, @CRTejada had asked a couple of us to look into U.S. companies doing business in Xinjiang. Was there anyone we shld be looking at in particular?

I said yes! Thermo Fisher, a U.S. maker of DNA sequencers that was selling their equipment to the police.

@CRTejada I had told @wang_maya I would look into Thermo Fisher's role in Xinjiang but only got around to it late last year. The only problem was: I felt I didn't have enough to take the story forward. @hrw had done a fantastic job documenting the company's interests in the region and ...

the @WSJ had also blazed a trail with their reporting on China taking DNA samples from innocent and guilty people. Read this piece by @natashakhanhk @xinwenfan @Liz_in_Shanghai
wsj.com/articles/china…

But thanks to Maya's sources, I heard that scientists affiliated with China’s police had teamed up with prominent American geneticists to better understand how to differentiate between ethnicities. They collected DNA samples from Uighurs, Tibetans and the Han ...

And sought help from Kenneth Kidd, a prominent geneticist from Yale. They invited him to China and one of them asked to spend 11 months at his lab. That person was the chief forensic physician from the ministry of public security’s Institute of Forensic Science ...

Who then took DNA samples from Dr. Kidd's lab in Yale back to China. The Chinese researchers started filing patents on DNA methodology using Kidd's samples WITHOUT TELLING HIM.

When I contacted Kidd, he said he had no idea that the patents were filed using his lab's DNA samples. But the cooperation also went the other way. Chinese govt researchers contributed the data of 2,143 Uighurs to a database run by Dr. Kidd that was partially funded by the DOJ.

I never say holy cow, but this was my holy cow moment. I remember calling @CRTejada being all breathless. He's dealt a lot with my "you can't believe this!" moments ...

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU, said this sharing of data could violate scientific norms of informed consent because it is not clear whether the Uighurs volunteered their DNA samples to the Chinese authorities. “No one should be in a database without express consent.”

Back to Thermo Fisher. I see now that it's the nexus between these American geneticists and the Chinese police. In 2015, the company co-sponsored a conference that brought all of these people together.

China used Thermo Fisher’s equipment to map the genes of its people, according to five Ministry of Public Security patent filings. Authorities in Xinjiang said that Thermo Fisher's machines are important for DNA inspections in criminal cases and have “no substitutes in China.”

In an earlier statement to me, Thermo Fisher said that it was working with American officials to figure out how its technology was being used in Xinjiang. Then I wake up to news on Wednesday that the company said it would stop selling its equipment in Xinjiang ...

It is widely believed that the Chinese police cross-sell equipment across provincial and regional lines, so it remains to be seen whether this announcement by Thermo Fisher makes any difference.

Will let @SophieHRW explain in her own words:

“It’s an important step, and one hopes that they apply the language in their own statement to commercial activity across China, and that other companies are assessing their sales and operations, especially in Xinjiang,”

Underpinning all of this, of course, is the Uighurs who had to give their DNA samples to the state. @dtbyler
told me he spoke to 5 Uighurs and dozens of others whose relatives had to do so. “There was a pretty strong coercive element to it."

Thank you to @Uighurian and Tahir Hamut and others who didn't dared to be named for sharing their stories. Those scenes of Uighurs standing in line to have their blood taken, fingerprints and faces scanned, voices recorded -- I will never forget. END

Here's the link to the piece: China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise nyti.ms/2NiHL75