---
title: "China Is Using Blood From Minorities For Genetic Research"
description: "China is taking DNA samples from its persecuted Uigher population to develop a troubling new form of genetic surveillance."
date: "2019-12-04"
modified: "2019-12-04"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/china-blood-minorities-genetic-research"
categories:
  - "Gene Editing"
  - "Genetics"
  - "Health & Medicine"
tags:
  - "china"
  - "dna"
  - "genetic testing"
  - "uigher"
---

# China Is Using Blood From Minorities For Genetic Research

![China is taking DNA samples from its persecuted Uigher population to develop a troubling new form of genetic surveillance.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/china-is-using-blood-from-minorities-for-genetic-research.png>)
*\<em\>Image: Image via NeedPix/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

China is running a disturbing genetic experiment on its persecuted Muslim Uigher population: trying to digitally reconstruct their faces based on genetic code.

China has rounded up at least a million Uighurs and other minorities and placed them in detention camps. And now, *The New York Times* [reports that](<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/business/china-dna-uighurs-xinjiang.html>) the country is using those camps to develop and test new mass surveillance techniques, including this new form of genetic profiling and identification.

Also disturbing is how the scientists behind the program have gained international support. American [engineers and scientists](<https://futurism.com/americans-developed-tech-china-reeducation-camps>) have [long been implicated](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/dragonfly-google-muslims-china>) in China's anti-Muslim programs, but the *NYT* reports that prominent European agencies and scientists are supporting this genetic research financially.

"There's a kind of culture of complacency that has now given way to complicity" within the world of science, University of Windsor in Ontario sociologist Mark Munsterhjelm told the *NYT*. And that international complicity is now manifesting as "essentially technologies used for hunting people."

Chinese police prevented the *NYT* from speaking to anyone whose DNA had been collected, so China's insistence that everyone consented to the study is impossible to confirm. But China's claim flies in the face of common sense: persecuted groups who have been rounded up and concentrated in detention camps could not have feasibly offered their consent to be a part of the program.

"What the Chinese government is doing should be a warning to everybody who kind of goes along happily thinking, 'How could anyone be worried about these technologies?'" University of Wisconsin-Madison bioethicist Pilar Ossario told the *NYT*.

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)