Poland has taken a stringent decision by dropping a Chinese firm from leading its gene mapping project, and this news piece was published in renowned US news resource Reuters. When sources from Cybersecurity Insiders tried to dig into the facts, all that was reported was confirmed to be a fact to a certain extent.
Going by the details, a report released by Polish Academy of Sciences says that a gene sequencing technology project that was been funded by European Union was about to take the help of China’s BGI Group regarding R&D of gene sequencing, data storage and access.
However, some researchers who took part in the research expressed their concerns over the project of creating a perfect Genomics Map of Poland people and so the project was dropped midway because of concerns over information security.
All those who aren’t aware of the roots of BGI Group, here are some facts to enlighten your mind. BGI’s full form is Beijing Genomics Institute and is a company that is into the business of genome sequencing on a commercial note.
Till here, everything seems to be fine….isn’t it? But here comes the major part- BGI Group has collaboration with People’s Liberation Army Hospitals and has already done a similar project related to genetic data from prenatal tests on pregnant woman in China to map prevalence of viruses on the current population, especially targeting those of Tibetan and Uyghur origin.
Although, the Shenzhen, China-based company denied all these allegations in early 2021, no country in the world is ready to believe it- as US President Donald Trump claims that the Xi Jinping led country started a bio war as COVID-19 virus that first erupted just as a contagious virus that turned into a pandemic and grip the entire world leading to loss to thousands of lives, economic slowdown, financial losses, job cuts, furloughs, WFH scenarios that led to fights within couples and many such issues.
Coming back to our Genome sequence mapping in Poland, at first the data security concerns were raised by US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) as BGI was trying to create a central repository for genetic analysis where the control and authority lies with the government of China.
BGI Group has denied the Reuters report as baseless and was assigned to malign fake news against the Chinese government and the China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called this accusation as baseless and an imaginary figurative planted by the western media with full support of government, respectively.
Note- Estimates are in that BGI had already taken over 100,000 complete Polish Genomes on its servers operating in the home terrain. And the Genomic Map might cost over $25.35 million.
