China does not oppose foreign institutions carrying out human
genetic resource research in the country, but they must strictly
obey all relevant laws and regulations, an official said Monday in
Beijing.
All cooperative international projects in human genetic resource
research in China should follow the principles of equality, mutual
benefit and joint participation; and the achievements and patents
must be owned and shared by both the foreign and domestic sides, Yu
Xiucheng said.
Yu is the director of the Division of Health Technology
Management of the Department of Sciences, Technology and Education
of the Ministry of Health.
Another vital principle is that all such projects must abide by
respecting and protecting the research subjects' right to know what
is being done.
Without an agreement based on these principles signed by both
sides, such projects cannot be conducted in China, and any samples
of human genetic resources gathered during such projects cannot be
taken abroad.
"We mainly protect the genetic resources of people of the same
genealogy who have lived in a place for a quite long time, groups
of people with the same or special diseases, and groups of people
living in certain areas," Yu noted.
For example, one hepatitis B patient's genetic samples may have
no research value. However, thousands of such patients' samples are
of great value for scientific research and should be protected, Yu
added.
Human genetic resources refer to such things as human gene
groups, blood, genes, organs, cells, and other DNA material of
human beings.
Yu made these remarks to China Daily in an exclusive
interview which focused on many people's worries that a lot of
China's human genetic resources were being lost to other countries
during gene research work conducted by foreign institutions in
China.
Some cases have been reported in recent years in which foreign
companies or institutions secretly conducted human genetic research
in China without revealing what they were doing and took a lot of
genetic resources out of the country or kept for themselves the
patent rights resulting from gene research done in China.
The Harvard-affiliated projects involving Chinese farmers in
east China's Anhui
Province in the early 1990s are an example of this.
The projects collected over 10,000 gene samples from farmers for
research on asthma without notifying them what the research was
for, according to Xinhua News Agency.
After that case, in 1998, the State Council issued a temporary
document on the management of human genetic resources.
And to back up the document, the ministries of health and
science and technology jointly circulated, in late September 2003,
a notice asking for the strengthening of the management of special
medical projects, including those dealing with human genetic
resources, both inside and outside China.
"Our management and protection of human genetic resources has
become much stricter and more scientific, but this does not mean we
reject all international cooperation, which, on the contrary, is
still necessary in some fields," said Yu, who is also a member of
the Chinese Human Genetic Resources Management Office.
(China Daily November 25, 2003)