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Pfizer, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb are among the pharmaceutical companies facing a congressional investigation into their clinical trial sites in China — including at locations allegedly linked to China’s military or in regions where the Chinese government has allegedly repressed Uyghurs and other religious minorities.
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on China, launched the investigation late last month in a series of letters to pharma executives whose companies operate clinical trial sites in China. AbbVie and Eli Lilly also received letters.
According to TrialSite News, Moolenaar’s letter focuses on “three broad concerns” related to national security safeguards: use of laboratories in the Xinjiang region, home to a large Uyghur population; maintenance of ethical standards; and informed consent procedures at the trial sites.
The drugmakers have until July 17 to provide the committee with information and data on clinical trials they conducted in military-owned hospitals or at laboratories in Xinjiang, and their due diligence processes to ensure the protection of intellectual property and other vital data collected at those sites.
The companies were also asked to provide details about their clinical trials’ adherence to global Good Clinical Practice standards and about their business deals or collaborations with Chinese biotechnology companies since 2020.
Daniel O’Connor, founder and CEO of TrialSite News, said the investigation is primarily about “whether globalization’s assumptions still hold in an era of strategic competition” between countries like the U.S. and China.
“For decades, pharmaceutical companies optimized clinical development for speed, cost and patient recruitment,” O’Connor said. “Today, those same decisions are increasingly being evaluated through the lenses of national security, human rights, data sovereignty and geopolitical resilience.”
Pharma companies accused of collaborating with Chinese military
In a statement, the Select Committee on China wrote that information posted on ClinicalTrials.gov shows that companies like Pfizer have “developed drugs in clinical trials at Chinese military hospitals, and in Xinjiang, China, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is conducting a genocide of Uyghur Muslims and other minorities.”
“Pfizer’s clinical trials held at PRC [People’s Republic of China] military hospitals raise significant questions related to how data developed through clinical trials at those hospitals could fuel the CCP’s military biotechnology research, experimentation, and capability development,” the statement notes.
Reggie Littlejohn, co-chair of the Sovereignty Coalition, said it’s unlikely that Uyghur participants in these trials could provide informed consent.
Littlejohn said that in 2021, the U.S. government determined that China was committing a genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, based on findings of forced sterilization, mass arbitrary detention, and state-imposed forced labor.
“In what world would any pharmaceutical company dream that people in Xinjiang would be able to give real informed consent to clinical trials under such circumstances?” Littlejohn asked.
The committee noted that Pfizer is conducting at least six trials in Xinjiang hospitals and performed “at least 43 trials that included PRC military medical centers and hospitals.”
Reuters reviewed several of the letters Moolenaar sent to other pharmaceutical companies, reporting that the drugmakers also maintained a significant level of research activity in China and collaboration with the Chinese military.
This includes Merck, which “sponsored or collaborated on 224 clinical studies in China since 2005, including at least 31 trials in Xinjiang and 40 at medical centers and hospitals affiliated with China’s military.”
AbbVie, in turn, “sponsored or collaborated on more than 100 clinical studies in China since 2007, including at least 17 sites in Xinjiang and 16 at military centers.”
“Conducting this research at PRC military hospitals puts the cutting-edge, biotechnology Intellectual Property (IP) of American companies at potential risk of being transferred to the Chinese military,” the letters stated.
Littlejohn agreed. “Using PRC military medical centers and hospitals to run clinical trials is of particular concern. Because of China’s ‘Military-Civil Fusion,’ even non-military enterprises are required to share information with the Chinese military.”
This “creates a substantial risk of the sharing of information with the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], posing a national security risk to the United States,” Littlejohn said.
Pharmaceutical companies participating in a ‘race to the bottom’
The letters stopped short of accusing the drugmakers of wrongdoing or illegal acts. Instead, they highlighted the ethical and security risks posed by those companies’ clinical trials in China and noted that Xinjiang is the “epicenter of the CCP’s genocide targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities.”
“The central issue is not wrongdoing — it is exposure to risk,” TrialSite News reported, noting that the letters argue that the “structural risks inherent in these research environments warrant heightened congressional oversight.”
Moolenaar’s letter to Pfizer acknowledged that the company has stated it will no longer sponsor trials in Xinjiang or at Chinese military hospitals.
In a statement cited by Reuters, Merck said patient safety and ethical integrity are priorities of its clinical trial program and that it follows all global guidelines. Eli Lilly said it is reviewing the letter closely. AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer did not provide further comment.
Reuters also cited a spokesperson for China’s embassy in the U.S., who said there is “nothing credible” in Moolenaar’s letter.
Moolenaar’s letters aren’t the first time he has set his sights on pharmaceutical research performed in China. In 2024, he sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asking it to investigate pharma companies performing research in Xinjiang or at Chinese military sites.
In May, Moolenaar added language to the 2027 U.S. Department of Agriculture funding bill that would bar the FDA from “accepting, reviewing, or considering any covered clinical data generated by a clinical investigation site” in China.
Moolenaar is also one of the sponsors of a bill that would place U.S. biotechnology licensing deals and investments in China under strict federal review.
For Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense, the willingness of U.S. pharmaceutical companies to perform clinical trials in China is part of a “race to the bottom” in which these drugmakers are “chasing profits.”
“Directing research to the jurisdiction with the lowest ethical safeguards is unethical. The treatment of the Uyghur and other populations of Xinjiang is yet another example that ‘never again’ didn’t really mean anything,” he said.
Jablonowski highlighted several of the clinical trials in question, including two studies “that include high mortality” and three studies “involving children as young as 12 years old.”
“There really is no room for doubt as to their appropriateness,” Jablonowski said. “It is highly questionable to conduct clinical trials in a place where human rights are so disregarded.”
Questions about ethics, reliability of Chinese clinical trials
Moolenaar — and several experts — also raised questions about the quality of clinical trials performed at Chinese laboratories.
In its statement, the committee wrote that, “China’s clinical trial system relies on rapid patient enrollment, which is three to five times faster than in the United States, due in part to a lack of ethical safeguards regarding informed consent and voluntary participation.”
This rapid-fire clinical trial system has attracted a growing number of pharmaceutical companies. Reuters cited data showing that China has surpassed the U.S. in clinical trial volume in recent years.
“By 2024, the U.S. share of early drug development programs had dropped to around 37% from 48% in 2015, while China’s share of the global total rose to over 32% from 8%, according to [one] study,” Reuters reported.
Former pharmaceutical research and development executive Sasha Latypova said that historically, clinical trial data from China was not considered reliable, due to numerous examples of data fraud and known ethical violations.
“The Phase 3 and FDA approval process required data from large trials from the U.S., Europe and, in some cases, Japan, but not from China or any other third-world countries,” Latypova said. “China historically reciprocated, and so, for approval in China, you would need a China-only study.”
However, PharmExec.com reported that “U.S. policymakers are increasingly alarmed by China’s rapid ascent in pharmaceutical development,” viewing a loss of American pharmaceutical and biotech primacy as a national security risk.
According to Endpoints News, several of the companies named in Moolenaar’s letters, including Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb, have struck multi-billion-dollar deals with Chinese pharmaceutical companies in recent years — developments the Trump administration fears will “undermine the U.S. biotech industry.”
A December 2025 report by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology stated that “China has systematically built a vertically integrated biotechnology ecosystem that is now in prime position to challenge U.S. leadership.”
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HHS launches plan to woo clinical trials back to U.S.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced “Operation TrailBlazer,” a new initiative aimed at wooing clinical trials back to the U.S. to “strengthen America’s leadership in clinical research.”
The initiative includes a proposal to launch an FDA pilot program that would shorten the time it takes to launch Phase 1 clinical trials, to “reduce early trial timelines by six to 12 months” and to relax the approval process for any “high-quality late-stage clinical trial with confirmatory evidence.”
Latypova suggested this might reduce the quality of clinical studies performed in the U.S. and potentially introduce riskier drugs into the marketplace. She said:
“Currently, the FDA is dismantling regulations to enable genetic therapies that cannot otherwise pass safety and efficacy testing under rigorous regulatory frameworks. As part of this dismantling of safety effort, the FDA is allowing numerous deviations and outright removing key pillars of safety, such as requirements for multiple Phase 3 studies, large studies, studies from reliable clinical sites.
“Allowing these deviations, and, for example, allowing a drug to be approved in the U.S. solely or largely based on clinical trial data from China, would put the public in the U.S. and globally — as these drugs are exported — at an undue risk.”
“In attempting to compete with China, the U.S. must be careful to maintain robust measures to protect informed consent,” Littlejohn said. “Our desire to be first in everything, including fast-tracking clinical trials, cannot come at the expense of our medical ethics.”
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