Summary
For the past several years, Yves Moreau, a bioinformatician at KU Leuven in Belgium, has been writing to editors and entire editorial boards of scientific journals raising questions about the validity of informed consent for the research use of genetic samples gathered from Chinese minorities, particularly in the far northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Human rights activists claim China’s government is waging a campaign of oppression against Uyghurs and other minorities in the area; the Chinese government maintains it is fighting terrorism and separatism. Moreau’s campaign has led to the retraction of two papers and dozens more are under investigation. Perhaps more significantly, at least one major publisher, Springer Nature, is taking steps to more closely screen submissions for ethical problems.