Two of America's largest drugmakers have spent years running clinical trials in Communist China — including in the region where Beijing is carrying out genocide and at hospitals run by the People's Liberation Army — and Congress is just now getting around to asking questions.
The House China Select Committee, led by Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, sent letters Monday to Merck and AbbVie demanding details on due diligence, data protection, and ethical standards at their Chinese trial sites by July 17. The committee wants answers specifically about trials in Xinjiang — the epicenter of Beijing's campaign against Uyghurs and other minorities — and at military-affiliated hospitals.
The stakes are straightforward: American biotech intellectual property is being handed to a foreign military on a platter, and American patient data may be going with it. "Conducting this research at PRC military hospitals puts the cutting-edge, biotechnology Intellectual Property of American companies at potential risk of being transferred to the Chinese military," the letters state.
The numbers are staggering. Merck has sponsored or collaborated on 224 clinical studies in China since 2005, including at least 31 in Xinjiang and 40 at military medical centers. AbbVie has conducted more than 100 studies since 2007, with at least 17 sites in Xinjiang and 16 at military facilities.
Why China? Because it's cheap and fast, and the ethics are, in the committee's words, "at best questionable." The letters put it plainly: "Through a combination of regulatory reforms, state subsidies, and (at best) questionable ethics, China has transformed itself into the cheapest and fastest place in the world to run early-stage human drug trials."
Follow the money. By 2024, China's share of global early drug development programs had surged to over 32%, up from 8% in 2015. America's share fell to around 37% from 48% in the same period. Pharma boardrooms get fatter margins; Beijing gets Western biotech know-how and American health data. The American public gets pills whose safety was vetted in a country where Chinese researchers have documented lapses in securing informed consent from trial participants.
Merck responded with the standard corporate boilerplate: patient safety and ethical integrity are priorities, and it follows all global guidelines. AbbVie declined to comment at all. The Chinese embassy called the investigation not credible and accused lawmakers of politicizing trade.
The letters acknowledge there is "no evidence" that either company has engaged in illegal activity. But that's precisely the problem — the legality isn't the issue. The systemic risk is. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021 doesn't even address clinical trials, a gap the committee notes while pointing to it as a benchmark for ethical conduct.
Moolenaar is also sponsoring the Biotech Investment National Security Act, a bipartisan bill that would add biotech to the list of screened technologies under outbound investment rules. A December report from the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology warned that "China has systematically built a vertically integrated biotechnology ecosystem that is now in prime position to challenge U.S. leadership."
The question isn't whether the House committee is asking the right questions — it is, finally. The question is why it took this long, and whether anything will come of it that disrupts a profit pipeline that has operated in plain sight for two decades.
