National Health Institutes (NIH) of the United States They have forbidden scientists from Cuba and five other “worrying countries” to access 21 biomedical databasesas the American magazine announced Thursday Science.
According to the published information, These records contain information on genetic variations, cancer cases and neurodegenerative diseasesamong other data.
In addition to Cuba, the other “worrying countries” for the Trump administration, which took the measure on April 2, are China, Iran, Russia, North Korea and Venezuela.
The Cuban scientists They used these databases for biomedical studies, for example, so the measure will affect some ongoing investigations of the Cuban science.
“This new block will definitely delay our understanding of many diseases and potentially affect patients,” said Tania Crombet Ramos, medical director of the Molecular Immunology Center (CIM) of Havana.
Not only prohibits access to these databases, but ends any project in which these sites participate with scientists from any of these six countries.
“At a time when the study of genetic variation is essential to point out the causes and priests of diseases, This looks like an expression of meaningless”, Said Pedro Antonio Valdés Sosa, a neuroinformatics of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
As he said Sciencethe scientist has used one of the databases blocked for these countries, specifically for Studies on the development of the child brain.
For its part, Gladys Maestre, Venezuelan neuroscientific from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said that The measure can be really devastating for scientists.
USA and health blockade
Although the former president Joe Biden It had imposed restrictions on foreign access to those databases, the new measure is much stronger.
According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), “hostile intelligence services could use this data to blackmail and coerce, identify high -risk government personnel and sensitive places, and perform offensive cyber operations.”
For the DOJ, access to “mass human genomic data” can help “adversaries” to create new Biological weapons.
Nevertheless, The new White House prohibition has a clear political intention to block the development of science in countries that consider “worrying.”
According to Andrew Nixon, communications director of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States, “NIHs take security supervision very seriously, including confidentiality, integrity and availability of participants’ data.”
What the Trump administration He does not say that some of the data collected in these prohibited medical sites were prepared by Chinese scientists, according to a statement from the Chinese genomic company, BGI Group, quoted by Science.
Since April 4, for example, thousands of Chinese scientists cannot access the surveillance, epidemiology and final results (SEER) program, a database of cancer cases in the United States, considered the largest repository of this type worldwide.
The prohibition would affect scientists from these countries that investigate neurodegenerative diseases and cancer, for example, as well as patients who suffer from them.
