Chinese company linked to Andrew Forrest says birth defects ‘a disgrace’
The president of the Chinese company which supplied COVID-19 test kits to billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s charity has previously declared his staff are forbidden to have children with birth defects because it would be a ‘disgrace’.
NSW Coronavirus News
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW Coronavirus News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The controversy over Andrew Forrest’s China connections escalated yesterday when a cancer funding announcement with the Health Minister was cancelled amid disturbing revelations about the Chinese genomic company which supplied COVID-19 test kits to the billionaire’s charity.
Mr Forrest and Health Minister Greg Hunt were due to visit Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, to announce a $67 million package for kids with cancer.
But the event was called off at late notice and a joint statement released instead in which Mr Hunt praised the mining magnate’s Minderoo Foundation.
Government MPs earlier blasted Mr Forrest for inviting China’s Victorian Consul-General Long Zhou to speak unannounced at a press conference with Mr Hunt on Wednesday, at a time when relations between the two countries are frayed over Australia’s call for an independent coronavirus probe.
But Mr Forrest yesterday denied that he was acting against the interests of Australia by giving a voice to a Chinese Communist Party official, citing Mr Zhou’s help securing personal protective equipment and 10 million testing kits for all Australians.
MORE NEWS
Mission Zero: How close is NSW to no new COVID-19 cases?
Local IT firms question COVIDSafe app data security
Ventilator boost to fight coronavirus
“I’m the most Australian person I know … I put Australia first,” he said. “I run the oranges out to the game for Australia, not China or America,” Mr Forrest said.
“China stepped up so I brought the Consul-General along when we broke the back of the PPE crisis in Perth.”
To add to the controversy, Mr Forrest’s Chinese partner in supplying the COVID-19 test kits is the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), whose president once boasted of a corporate culture verging on eugenics.
In a panel discussion in 2018, Wang Jian declared that BGI staff are forbidden to have children with birth defects.
“If they were born with defects, it would be a disgrace to all 7000 staff,” Mr Wang said, according to an English translation by Shanghai United Media publication Sixth Tone.
Mr Wang declared that none of the 1400 babies born to company employees have defects.
Employees also are not allowed to have heart bypass surgery but must rely on “gene tech and clean living to prevent cardiovascular disease”.
BGI also tracks the dining habits of employees and has disabled its elevators.
Mr Forrest and wife Nicola helped secure the Chinese-made test kits through their charitable Minderoo Foundation for use across Australia.
The kits give the nation’s largest pathology providers Sonic Healthcare and Healius greater capacity to test for COVID-19 as part of a threefold increase in total daily testing capability.
The Minderoo Foundation also has secured 100,000 nasal swabs for use in COVID-19 testing, which will augment existing supplies.
Long-stemmed swabs already procured by the government in China are incompatible with the existing Australian pathology supply chain, according to Victorian manufacturing sources.
They are too long to fit into the Australian standard sterile tube and the snap point on the shaft is in the wrong place. Clinicians in Victoria are understood to be concerned that the shaft has to be forcibly snapped, leaving a jagged edge that could pierce gloves.
“This has become dangerous for clinicians as they struggle to break the swab shaft elsewhere while attempting to ensure that the snapped shaft, potentially coated in COVID-19 rich mucous, does not pierce scarce PPE and risk infection of the clinician or nurse,” said the source.
It is not known what sized swab Mr Forrest has secured.
Meanwhile, Sydney Chinese consul-general Gu Xiaoji yesterday launched a new PR offensive to deflect blame over the origins of the virus.
“Wuhan laboratory has nothing to do with the origin of the novel coronavirus,” the office tweeted.
A spokesman for the Sydney consulate also issued a statement on its website claiming it was “impossible” the virus could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory.
“The research facility is a biosafety level 4 laboratory that is able to deal with the world’s deadliest pathogens,” the spokesman claimed.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday praised Australia’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.
It comes after China’s ruling Communist Part angrily dismissed Canberra’s calls.
Mr Pompeo, who has piled pressure on China over the pandemic, waded into the dispute as he sarcastically said that Australia upset Beijing through its “temerity” to ask questions. “Who in the world wouldn’t want an investigation of how this happened to the world?” Pompeo told reporters in Washington. “The solution to this crisis will come from freedom-loving people around the world.
“While we know this started in Wuhan, China, we don’t yet know from where it started and despite our best efforts to get experts on the ground, they continue to try to hide.”