Gene data harvested by China

LONDON: Britain should be concerned about the harvesting of genetic data from millions of women by a Chinese company through prenatal tests, a senior British lawmaker says.

A Reuters review of scientific papers and company statements found that BGI Group developed the tests in collaboration with the Chinese military and was using them to collect genetic data around the world for research on the traits of populations.

‘‘I’m always concerned when data leaves the United Kingdom, that it should be treated with the respect and privacy that we would expect here at home, and the concern that this raises is that it may not be so,’’ Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the British Parliament’s foreign affairs select committee, said.

‘‘The connections between Chinese genomics firms and the Chinese military do not align with what we would normally expect in the United King dom or indeed many other countries.’’

The privacy policy on the website for the NonInvasive Prenatal Test (NIPT), sold under the brand name NIFTY in Britain, said data collected could be shared when it was ‘‘directly relevant to national security or national defence security’’ in China.

BGI said it had never shared data for national security purposes and had never been asked to.

The company said it fully complied with European GDPR data protection rules and also had the British certification for personal information management.

‘‘BGI’s NIPT test was developed solely by BGI — not in partnership with China’s military. All NIPT data collected overseas are stored in BGI’s labs in Hong Kong and are destroyed after five years,’’ it said in an email to Reuters, adding it took data protection, privacy and ethics extremely seriously.

Reuters found that BGI has published at least a dozen joint studies on the tests with the People’s Liberation Army since 2010, trialling and improving the tests or analysing the data they provided.

DNA data collected from prenatal tests on women outside China has also been stored in China’s governmentfunded gene database, one of the world’s largest, BGI previously confirmed.

Online records reviewed by Reuters showed evidence that the genetic data of at least 500 women who had taken the NIFTY test, including some women outside China, was stored in the China National GeneBank. — Reuters

PHOTO: REUTERS Invasive or not? Office building administrator Emilia, who requested that only her first name be used, and who had taken Chinese gene firm BGI Group’s NIFTY prenatal test, poses for a picture in Warsaw, Poland.