Thousands of pregnant British women unwittingly hand over their DNA to controversial Chinese firm
EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of pregnant British women unknowingly hand over their DNA to a controversial Chinese company with close ties to the communist regime’s armed forces
- MPs call for ‘urgent’ investigation into £350 prenatal blood tests
- Growing concern over a Beijing-backed company’s access to genetic data
Thousands of pregnant British women are unknowingly giving their DNA to a controversial Chinese company with close ties to the communist regime’s armed forces.
MPs and colleagues have called for an ‘urgent’ investigation into the Beijing-backed BGI Group over £350 prenatal blood screening tests sold in the UK.
They are increasingly concerned about the company’s access to the genetic data after it was blacklisted by the US and labeled a “danger” by a science minister in parliament.
Former Health Secretary Lord Bethell said the information gathered by the ‘NIFTY’ tests (a type of non-invasive prenatal screening) is ‘incredibly powerful’ and could pose a ‘huge danger’.
He warned that it could potentially be used to influence populations, conduct mass surveillance and even develop biological weapons.
MPs and colleagues have called for an ‘urgent’ investigation into the Beijing-backed BGI Group over £350 prenatal blood screening tests sold in the UK. They are increasingly concerned about the company’s access to the genetic data after it was blacklisted by the US and labeled a ‘danger’ by a science minister in parliament (file image)
Former Health Secretary Lord Bethell (pictured) said the information gathered by the ‘NIFTY’ tests (a type of non-invasive prenatal screening) was ‘incredibly powerful’ and could pose a ‘huge danger’
An investigation has previously alleged that BGI used a Chinese military supercomputer to analyze NIFTY data from Chinese women and chart the prevalence of viruses among them.
This included looking for indicators of mental illness and single out persecuted Tibetan and Uyghur minorities.
BGI rejected the findings at the time, accusing MPs of continuing to spread ‘misinformation’. It said it did not engage in unethical practices or condone human rights violations.
In a letter to Information Commissioner John Edwards, the group of MPs said: “It is vital that consumers have full transparency to carefully assess the risks associated with sharing such data with Chinese state-owned companies.”
The letter was signed by Lord Bethell and five MPs, including Henry Smith, Siobhain McDonagh, Taiwo Owatemi and Charlotte Nichols, who sit on the Foreign Affairs, Treasury, Health and Affairs and Trade Committees respectively.
Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael, a co-signatory of the letter, compared the company’s sphere of influence to that of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei and security camera company Hikvision, which MPs have accused of helping the communist regime spy on Great Britain. -Britain.
BGI Group has also formed a deep network in the UK winning a multi-million pound Covid contract and establishing partnerships with UK universities including Oxford and Cambridge.
Mr Carmichael said: ‘This is a national security failure of the highest order.
This is a national security shortcoming
“We’ve been years behind our security allies ‘Five Eyes’ [the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand] which have blacklisted several BGI subsidiaries.”
Science minister George Freeman told MPs two months ago that the company posed a ‘danger’ and had taken an ‘aggressive’ approach to Britain’s world-leading genetic research.
The US has added two BGI subsidiaries to a trade blacklist for their data usage.
Yet the company’s NIFTY tests, which are approved by the drug watchdog, are still being bought by women in the UK. They are not available on the NHS but are widely available privately.
BGI Group insisted it followed the same security regulations as other brands, with blood samples processed in its London lab and all data taken kept on its UK and EU servers.