Womens Rights Without Frontiers

Rep. John Moolenaar’s recent letter to five major U.S. pharmaceutical companies should serve as a wake-up call.  While stopping short of alleging any wrongdoing, the House Select Committee on China is actively investigating major U.S. drugmakers over clinical trials conducted in China, including allegedly at hospitals in Xinjiang and at Chinese military-linked institutions. In my opinion, U.S. pharmaceutical firms conducting clinical trials in the People’s Republic of China are not just making questionable business decisions; they are exposing Americans to national security risks while entangling themselves in one of the most ethically compromised environments in the world.

The national security dimension alone is disqualifying. In May 2019, China’s state media publicly framed the escalating confrontation with the United States as a “people’s war,” signaling a total struggle that mobilizes political, economic, technological, and other resources against the United States. That language was not a throwaway phrase; it described a comprehensive strategy that explicitly reaches far beyond tariffs and trade.

Against that backdrop, the idea that American companies would voluntarily place sensitive clinical research inside China defies logic. This is a regime with a long, well-documented record of intellectual property theft in sectors ranging from advanced technology to biomedicine, which U.S. analysts have described as part of a broader campaign of economic and strategic appropriation. Clinical trial data is not just commercially valuable; it is strategically valuable. Reuters reported on June 30 that the House Committee had opened investigations into whether trials conducted in China may have helped fuel the country’s military capability, and the committee’s own materials state that conducting such research at PRC military hospitals puts cutting-edge biotechnology intellectual property at risk of transfer to the Chinese military.

The risks intensify when those trials involve Chinese military-linked institutions. Rep. Moolenaar’s inquiry raises concerns that research allegedly conducted at PRC military hospitals could expose cutting-edge biotechnology intellectual property to transfer risks involving the Chinese military. Conducting trials in PLA-affiliated facilities opens a channel for sensitive information to flow into the hands of a foreign military. 

The ethical failures are even more disturbing. Clinical trials conducted in Xinjiang raise profound moral questions. In January 2021, the U.S. Department of State formally determined that the Chinese government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. The findings underlying that determination included forced sterilization, forced medical testing, mass arbitrary detention, and other severe abuses.  In addition, there is substantial, growing evidence that forced organ harvesting occurs in Xinjiang and other areas of China.

Under such conditions, informed consent is implausible.  The assumption that individuals living under constant surveillance and under threat of coercion can freely volunteer for experimental medical research is questionable at best. The more uncomfortable possibility is that such environments are attractive precisely because they eliminate the inconvenience of rigorous ethical standards and genuine patient autonomy. That concern is no longer hypothetical: the committee’s public materials note that China’s clinical trial system relies on rapid enrollment “three to five times faster than in the United States.”   Is this rapid enrollment due in part to a lack of ethical safeguards regarding informed consent and voluntary participation?  The committee specifically questions whether subjects in Xinjiang are participating voluntarily.

Rep. Moolenaar notes in his June 29 letter to Pfizer that the company “will no longer sponsor trials in Xinjiang and at PRC military hospitals in the future.” This is a welcome step, but it is not enough. One central question remains unanswered: Are any of these companies still conducting ongoing trials in these environments today?

The American public—and Congress—should demand a clear answer. Congress should also consider prohibiting the FDA from accepting, reviewing, or relying on clinical data generated at PRC military hospitals or in Xinjiang, where the conditions necessary for ethical research and trustworthy consent cannot be assured.

This investigation is not simply about competition with China. It is about whether U.S. companies are willing to compromise core ethical principles and national security interests in pursuit of speed, cost savings, or market access. Conducting clinical trials in a genocide-linked region or within a military-integrated system controlled by an adversarial regime are lines that should not be crossed.

If the United States is to lead in medicine, it must lead without abandoning the principles that make that leadership legitimate. Anything less is not just a strategic error—it is a moral failure.

Sources

1.       Chairman John Moolenaar, Letter to Dr. Albert Bourla, Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer 1, 3 (June 29, 2026), https://files.constantcontact.com/f0eecb46901/7ce2c65d-4e4f-4c62-81c5-2560781cacbd.pdf.

2.       See Nectar Gan, Chinese Media Calls for “People’s War” as U.S. Trade War Heats Up, CNN (May 14, 2019), https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/asia/china-us-beijing-propaganda-intl.

3.       See Ahmed Aboulenein, U.S. House Committee Opens Investigation into Merck, AbbVie China Drug Trials, Reuters (June 30, 2026), https://www.reuters.com/world/us-house-committee-opens-investigation-into-merck-abbvie-china-drug-trials-2026-06-30/.

4.      Determination of the Secretary of State on Atrocities in Xinjiang, U.S. Dep’t of State (Jan. 18, 2021), https://2017-2021.state.gov/determination-of-the-secretary-of-state-on-atrocities-in-xinjiang/.

5.       See China Commits “Genocide” Against Uighurs: State Department Report, Al Jazeera (Mar. 30, 2021), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/30/china-genocide-uighurs-xinjiang-state-department-report-human-rights.

6.      Pfizer Conducted Clinical Trials at Chinese Military Hospitals, Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, U.S. House of Representatives (June 30, 2026), https://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/media/letters/pfizer-conducted-clinical-trials-at-chinese-military-hospitals.