Thank God the SARS crisis brought about a maturity of China’s political leadership and a new age of transparency.

In the spirit of the 1930s Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, China is ignoring science it finds inconvenient. The head of the ministry of agriculture’s veterinary bureau, Jia Youling, has rejected research on bird flu published in the journal Nature last week by Yi Guan and his colleagues at the universities of Hong Kong and Shantou.

The paper concluded from genetic analysis that the H5N1 bird flu killing migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in north-west China had come from southern China. An independent team in Beijing reported similar findings. Chinese officials had claimed that the virus came from another country. Last week Jia told the official Xinhua news service that Guan’s paper “made the wrong conclusion” and “lacks credibility” because birds do not fly to Qinghai from southern China – even though this is a well-known migratory route.

Ominously, Jia added that Guan’s group did not even go to Qinghai or have permission to do the research, and that his lab does not meet safety standards. Yet Guan’s BSL3 lab complies with international standards, and his team collected samples from Qinghai before the government introduced rules last month saying no one could study dead animals or bird flu, or even report an outbreak of animal disease, without permission. “They are trying to close everyone’s lab,” Guan told reporters.

Ah, the joys of progress and reform. The scary thing is, if the scientists are correct, avian flu will make SARS look like a paper cut. If the CCP is actually impeding research and lying about it, they could be endangering the lives of millions.

Via CDT.