UK must act against Chinese bioscience menace, Sir Iain Duncan Smith says

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China might use the UK’s genetic knowledge to create focused bioweapons, a Conservative former minister has claimed.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith urged the Government to comply with strikes by the US and act against Chinese bioscience corporations, as he drew comparisons with motion against telecoms agency Huawei.

The Tory former minister’s warning was echoed by Labour’s Fabian Hamilton, who individually warned of the dangers of opening UK genomic knowledge to international rivals.

Genomics, the research of DNA as an entire set of knowledge, is a burgeoning space of medical know-how, and is getting used to foretell, diagnose and deal with illnesses in new methods.

Writing in The Telegraph, Sir Iain warned that it might have extra sinister makes use of.

“Like other advanced technologies, genomics, when used legitimately, can help create new drugs to fight diseases like cancer,” he wrote, including: “However, its dual-use potential means it can also be used to create targeted bioweapons or pathogens.”

Sir Iain pointed to studies the Chinese state might have used genomic know-how to gather knowledge on the nation’s ethnic minority teams, such because the Uighur Muslims.

MPs together with Sir Iain have beforehand warned that Chinese genomics big BGI Group may very well be a hazard to the UK’s pursuits, and the corporate has been blacklisted within the US on account of safety issues.

US legislators are at the moment making an attempt to limit entry to American genomic knowledge by corporations they imagine have hyperlinks to hostile overseas states.

BGI, which received Covid-related contracts from the UK Government throughout the pandemic, denies it has hyperlinks to the Beijing authorities.

Sir Iain mentioned: “Yet again, the UK’s position in this debate is a mess. Last year, the Government admitted BGI was a ‘danger point’ in the UK’s science and technology ecosystem, yet it continues to allow BGI access to our genomics sector.”

He claimed this echoes the “weakness it showed over Huawei and Hikvision, risks repeating previous mistakes if we fail to appreciate the severity of the challenge”.

Writing within the i newspaper, Mr Hamilton likened genomics’ progress to synthetic intelligence, and claimed it can “very likely form the backbone of medical treatments in the future”.

The Leeds North East MP, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, praised his personal occasion’s life sciences technique which goals to help genomics in healthcare.

But he added: “The strength of our life sciences sector will depend upon the amount of data available, and how exposed public and private sector organisations – from the NHS to major companies such as Bupa and Oxford Nanopore – are to state and non-state actors.

“In this light, China’s quest for genomic data is part of an attempt to dominate the world’s life sciences industry.”

Mr Hamilton claimed the Government was “failing to respond to security challenges that are well understood”, and mentioned there have been “serious national security implications for a lack of action”.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson mentioned: “We have invested more than £338 million to boost cyber resilience across health and social care.

“Our cyber security specialists monitor for new threats 24 hours a day and we continually allocate resources to ensure risks are minimised and patient data is protected.

“Building on our cyber security strategy which prioritises patient safety, we are working on a new programme to enhance protection and reduce the risk of an attack across the sector.”

A BGI spokesman mentioned: “BGI is privately-owned and our work is undertaken for civilian and scientific purposes only.

“Statements alleging BGI is controlled by the Chinese government or military are false.”