Chrétien Family Linked to Chinese Scientist Involved In Winnipeg Laboratory Breach

Michel Chrétien, the brother of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, carried out research studies on deadly viruses with a Chinese-Canadian scientist removed by the RCMP.

She was a brilliant scientist, credited as one of the researchers who helped cure Ebola. Then came the news of her sudden removal, followed by reports of virus shipments to China. No one knows where she is now, but we do know where she has been. One thing is for certain - the story of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu is a mysterious one.

The problems appeared to start in 2019.

It was that summer the news broke that Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, along with her husband Keding Cheng and a number of unidentified Chinese students, had been escorted out of the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, Canada by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The sudden removal of Qiu on July 5, a prominent virologist who was at one time the head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies department in the Special Pathogen Program of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), sent shockwaves through the international community. The NML, a biosafety level-4 laboratory (BSL-4), is Canada’s only laboratory equipped to contain and deal with the world’s most deadly pathogens. One of only about 50 worldwide, it is operated by the Government of Canada through PHAC. The removal of Qiu and her colleagues was described as a “policy breach,” and assurances were given to the public that there was no safety risk. Those assurances however felt meek, particularly after Covid-19 hit in December of 2019. Qiu’s work, though centred mostly around the Ebola virus, also crossed into coronavirus research. Her husband had published research on Covid-19’s predecessor which hit Canada in 2003: Severe Acute Respiratory Virus (SARS). It had further been discovered in August of 2019 that Qiu had been collaborating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the BSL-4 lab theorized to have been the source of a lab leak resulting in the Covid-19 pandemic. Much speculation followed. Charges were never laid in the matter however, and after having her security clearance revoked and being placed on administrative leave for almost two years, she was finally officially fired in January 2021.

The reasoning behind her firing remains murky. Access to information requests obtained by CBC showed that she had been shipping live viruses, including Ebola and Henipah, to Beijing, in March of 2019, preceding her removal from NML. Any shipments would have required the approval of PHAC however, who insisted that all relevant protocols were followed. It was never confirmed if the shipment was a part of the RCMP investigation.

While we may never know the exact reason why Qiu was escorted out that day - theories ranged from espionage concerns, to intellectual property infringement, to technical policy missteps - we do know one thing now. She united with Michel Chrétien, the brother of former Prime Minister of Jean Chrétien, to expand their joint research interests. And that research was later used in work done on novel Covid-19 therapies by Michel Chrétien in further collaboration with China down the road.

Qiu’s breakthrough came in 2013. After years of experimental research with monoclonal antibodies, a combination of three which she dubbed “ZMab” showed immense promise in protecting against oft-lethal Ebola infections. Her research paper on the subject stated “We previously demonstrated that the administration of ZMAb within 24 hours after exposure [to Ebola virus] completely protected all treated NHPs (non-human primates)” - an incredible claim against a pathogen with a mortality rate approaching ninety per cent. That Chrétien would want to work with her is hardly surprising. Her study was nothing short of a miracle.

The title of the paper detailing their joint research efforts is “Dr. Chrétien’s Love Affair With China,” and it is fascinating.

Chrétien, a researcher at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal (IRCM), made headlines in early 2020 after it was postulated whether there may be a “made-in-Canada” solution to the coronavirus outbreak. Michel’s prior work using quercetin - a popular supplement - drew broad attention, particularly from China. His former studies had involved studying quercetin’s effectiveness in treating Ebola, which were done in conjunction with NML during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. What was not known at the time is that Qiu - the virologist later removed by the RCMP - was the scientist at NML running the experiments for him. The article details how Chrétien contacted Qiu in 2014 to run tests for him using quercetin on Ebola at the NML. After finding success in those trials, they later conducted similar investigations on Zika virus, claiming that the results were “beyond their expectations.”

There were beliefs that quercetin may also work on Covid-19, and the clinical trials commenced in China before Covid-19 was even declared a pandemic. Chrétien, an accomplished scientist who has won many awards in his field, had studied at Berkeley, and trained with Dr. Choh Hao Li. He maintained high-level connections to Chinese researchers afterward, having been granted an honorary professorship at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in the 1980s. He is also credited for bringing Chinese students to the IRCM to train at the prestigious institution. He later used those connections to contact researchers in Wuhan in February of 2020, asking if he could help by sending samples for clinical trials to test quercetin’s efficacy in treating Covid-19. A million dollars was donated by the Lazaridis Family Foundation to commence the study in February 2020. The WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic shortly after, on March 11, 2020.

The study was quietly scrapped and cancelled in late 2020, citing a lack of clinical subjects to test the remedy on. The claim was that the virus had been “quickly brought under control,” in China, rendering the study irrelevant as “the number of patients needed to set up clinical trials was no longer available there [in China].” Of course, today, after witnessing years of brutal-but-futile lockdowns in China put into place in a misguided government effort to mitigate the spread of the virus, we know that wasn’t true at all.

A later study published by independent researchers available on the National Institutes of Health’s medical paper database confirm that querectin did indeed show promise in the fight against Covid-19, concluding that “Quercetin shows multifactor beneficial action against SARS-CoV-2 to counterbalance Covid-19 infection.” This of course calls into question the real reason why Chrétien’s original early trials in China were cancelled in the first place, and also a broader question as to why Canada stubbornly insists on continuing to conduct research with China, given that they have proven themselves to be less-than-predictable bedmates.

The study quotes previous ground laid by using quercetin to counter Ebola virus. Indeed, it actually references one that Chrétien published jointly with our now-disgraced scientist Qiu, titled “Prophylactic Efficacy of Quercetin 3-β-O-d-Glucoside against Ebola Virus Infection.”

We will never know definitively what transpired at the Winnipeg NML. The Liberal government has made sure of that, taking the extraordinary step to kill any investigation by suing the House Speaker to block the release of records regarding the firing of Qiu and her husband.

"It appears that what you might well call Chinese agents infiltrated one of the highest prized national security elements when it comes to biosecurity and biodefence," said Christian Leuprecht, a security expert and professor at the Royal Military College.

We know that Qiu, originally from and trained in China, sent live viral samples to Beijing, and that she was a key asset in building relationships with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Her trips to China were well-known and documented, and hardly clandestine in nature. She took five trips to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through 2017-2018 alone, following its approval as a BSL-4 facility in 2017. PHAC and the Government of Canada were certainly aware of her activities and were encouraging not just her, but others to forge closer ties to Chinese researchers. Was she releasing information to scientists working for the Chinese government during those trips? Almost certainly. They were research partners. Was she doing it without the full knowledge and grace of PHAC, and running afoul of protocols or treading into espionage territory? Difficult to say. Only she, and maybe a handful of others, know.

One thing that we can say for certain is that her investigations in her field were invaluable, likely changing millions of lives, and that it appears that the groundwork she helped to lay not just in Ebola, but in quercetin research, conjointly with Michel Chrétien, had immeasurable potential that was unfortunately never realized. We will never get answers on why his study in China, later confirmed to show promise in treating Covid-19, was cancelled, just as we will never be told why CanSino abandoned early trials on vaccine research with Canadian scientists.

The other lesson to be learned is that we have to be more cautious with how we approach research and development projects with the Chinese government. Stricter protocols and guidelines are necessary to define intellectual property boundaries. Qiu’s name appeared on numerous research papers done in conjunction with the Academy of Military Science in China, as well as on several patents submitted to the China National Intellectual Property Administration. Is this where the trouble started? Projects and partnerships need to be carefully monitored by PHAC going forward to defend national security interests, and even while PHAC was acutely aware of Qiu’s work with with Chinese researchers, she still somehow ended up barred from one of our top laboratory facilities. Did she get caught up in an intellectual property battle by transferring research to the Chinese government? And Chrétien’s cancelled quercetin trials - which barely even made the news - should certainly serve as an advisory notice for Canadian workers who carry out research with China, only to have those projects inexplicably shelved for dubious reasons.

As for the the sad story of Qiu, an incredible Chinese-Canadian virologist who helped to cure Ebola, it appears that the answers to those questions will remain tightly locked in the vault of Covid-era secrets, along with many others. It should be the strongest precautionary tale to Canada of them all however; whatever else she may have been, she was a genius in her field, and it is hard to argue that what happened to her should be described as anything other than a tragic loss for all.