Mystery around 2 fired scientists points to larger issues at Canada’s high-security lab, former colleagues say
July 8, 2021Tilbury TimesComments Off on Mystery around 2 fired scientists points to larger issues at Canada’s high-security lab, former colleagues say
Two leading scientists are standing by a pair of researchers fired from Canada’s only Level-4 virology lab, instead pointing the finger at issues inside the Winnipeg-based facility itself.
Two leading scientists are standing by a pair of researchers fired from Canada’s only Level-4 virology lab, instead pointing the finger at issues inside the Winnipeg-based facility itself.
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her biologist husband, Keding Cheng, were stripped of their security clearances and escorted from the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in July 2019.
They were then fired in January , though the Public Health Agency of Canada has refused to say why. A RCMP investigation is also ongoing; no charges have been laid.
For months, opposition MPs have been demanding answers about the couple’s dismissal and the removal of the Chinese students they were working with, asking whether it could be linked to espionage .
PHAC and government officials have remained tight-lipped about the dismissal, initially citing privacy legislation, but more recently saying that case involves national security concerns.
Now two former colleagues are speaking out, saying that speculation is wrong.
Intellectual property dispute
For the past two years, Gary Kobinger has been watching the case with dismay and disbelief from his lab at Laval University.
As head of the NML’s special pathogens unit until 2016, Kobinger and Qiu worked closely together and were internationally acclaimed for creating ZMapp, an Ebola vaccine that has saved thousands of lives in West Africa. [Qiu] told me, ‘This is a misunderstanding and I don’t know why I was walked out of the building.’ She didn’t understand. She was, from the bottom of her heart, saying that this is a misunderstanding, he said in an interview.
After talking with Qiu and other government scientists, Kobinger said he believes the incident started when Qiu was travelling to China — with the NML’s knowledge and approval — to help set up a Level-4 lab in Wuhan.
Someone at PHAC was concerned she was sharing proprietary information about biosafety protocols and safe work flows, Kobinger said.
But it’s something done regularly between colleagues, he said, so that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel and they don’t have to repeat the mistakes of the past. These protocols are very specific to location, because they are heavily [dependent] on the physical room where the work is being done, said Kobinger. So sharing this — is it intellectual property, really? Are you breaching the intellectual property because you’re saying, ‘On our side, the way we decontaminate this material is A, B, C, D?’
In the wake of those trips, PHAC discovered Qiu was listed as an inventor on two patents filed by agencies in China in 2017 and 2019 — a concern that Kobinger said snowballed needlessly. She was doing a lot of the same work we used to do … testing molecules and vaccines from other labs, which is one of the reasons why we were successful in developing an Ebola vaccine and a treatment, he said. In science, you can’t work in a silo and think you can succeed.
Chinese scientists gave Qiu credit for her work, but neither PHAC nor NML are named on the patents. That means Canada would be unlikely to receive royalties associated with any sales of the technology, should it get to market.
Federal legislation states Ottawa owns all inventions made by public servants, and a government employee can’t file for a patent outside of the country without the minister’s permission.
While PHAC was right to raise questions about the patents, Kobinger said the agency overreacted.
Qiu told him she was unaware her name had been added to the patents — and that she herself reported the second one to PHAC. An honest, open discussion from the beginning would have been very, very useful to maybe avoid where we seem to be now, he said.
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