No clear an­swers: Yes, re­cent ac­tions against Chi­nese Amer­i­can sci­en­tists do pose a threat — but maybe those of­fi­cial con­cerns about es­pi­onage are valid too

Ear­li­er this week we asked our read­ers to chime in on a con­ver­sa­tion in­spired by for­mer NIH di­rec­tor and Sanofi R&D chief Elias Zer­houni, who was con­cerned that re­cent purges of Chi­nese Amer­i­can sci­en­tists at top bio­med­ical in­sti­tu­tions could spell trou­ble for the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. While ground­ed in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, he ar­gues, the US risks los­ing valu­able tal­ent and col­lab­o­ra­tions if it doesn’t han­dle the sit­u­a­tion prop­er­ly.

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