Exporting Honour

"There is no way he would be putting the public in danger. He knows what he's doing. Dr. Nielsen is a very experienced scientist. He's not a bioterrorist."
John Prescott, professor of pathobiology and animal health, University of Guelph

Is there a legitimate case? Is it possible that someone who has been a renowned researcher in his profession, acknowledged and decorated for his expertise and leading research, would be so casually crass as to throw it all away, and live with his conscience knowing that his surrender to an impulse to gain a handful of yuan at the expense of his reputation could bring him to moral ruin?

A Canadian scientist who was a leading expert in his field with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, treating his profession, his reputation and his future with such incredible disregard? If this is true it is difficult to understand. But then human nature and the events that bring us to our own personal states of misery and despair are undecipherable even to ourselves, much less onlookers.

Apprehended months ago, back on October 24, planning to embark on a flight to China, Klaus Nielsen, one of the world's leading experts on the infectious brucella bacteria, charged with attempting to smuggle 17 vials of the pathogen to China. China is well known through its investment in industrial espionage to favour such short-cuts.

And it is part and portion of the human condition that if determined recruiters are patient enough eventually they will be successful in persuading the most surprisingly well inoculated minds against such probes and attempts at corrupting long-held values, cultural and social mores, patriotic attachments, to find success.

That link that led this man to betray the trust placed in him to ensure the secure and safe holding of national policies and formulae and organisms entrusted to him may have been another former CFIA scientist, Wei Ling Yu, whose allegiance to his adopted country may have been trumped by a switch in allegiance to a country of his heritage.

Both are now said to have been engaged in "unlawful efforts to commercialize intellectual property" held in ownership by the Government of Canada and its agency. Both scientists are charged with breach of trust by a public official. Professor Nielsen faces as well charges under the Export and Import Permits Act, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act and the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act.

The brucellosis vials he was in possession of en route to the Ottawa airport were not his to dispose of, much less to profit by. As an integral member of a scientific team winning a CFIA Technology Transfer Award in 2003 for the development of a 15-second test for detecting brucellosis in cattle, he has, in one fell and foul swoop, surrendered his soul to acquire renminbi.

Where will he now be enabled to hold his head high in pride at his accomplishments?