In July 2019, world-renowned biological researchers Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng were quietly walked out of the Canadian government’s National Microbiology Lab (NML). The original allegation against them was that Qiu had authorised a shipment to China of some of the deadliest viruses on the planet, including Ebola and Nipah.
Qiu and Cheng, a married couple, subsequently lost their security clearances and were then fired by the NML in January 2021. At the time, both were subject to investigations by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS). The NML said both had lost their positions for ‘breaches of policy’; it did not say what those breaches or policies had been.
Then the story seemed to go away—until now.
