On August 31, 2024, South China Morning Post published an exclusive report on the tragic passing of Dr. Jane Ying Wu 吴瑛, a prominent Chinese American researcher in neurology and genetics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. 

Dr. Wu took her own life on July 10, 2024, after her lab was shut down and all records of her work were erased by Northwestern University.

Her death has drawn attention to the negative impact of the "China Initiative" and "foreign interference" investigations by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which targeted scientists of Chinese descent. Over 250 scientists, most of them of Asian origin, have been scrutinized by the NIH alone, leading to job losses and severe personal and professional damages, and now an apparent loss of life.

According to the report, there were only two indictments and three convictions as legal outcomes of the NIH's "China Initiative" investigations, yet 112 scientists lost their jobs as a result.

The NIH Office of Extramural Research, headed by Dr. Michael Lauer, declined to say whether Dr. Wu was a target but a source informed about the matter said there were investigations of Dr. Wu.

Dr. Wu was remembered by her peers as a warm, caring, and inspiring role model. Dr. Wu's contributions to neurodegenerative disease research and her involvement in training the next generation of scientists in the U.S. and China were widely recognized.  She significantly influenced the careers of many scientists, including Dr. Bing Ren, who credits her with guiding him into molecular biology.  

“Dr Wu taught me basic molecular biology skills, and showed me how discoveries were made at the bench,” said Dr. Ren, who first met Dr. Wu in 1993 and worked under her direct supervision at Harvard University.  “Dr Wu was the one that opened my eyes to the wonderful world of molecular biology, and convinced me to pursue a career in this field,” said the professor in cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

“The investigations killed her career,” said Dr. Xiao-Fan Wang, a distinguished professor in cancer research at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.  “She was such a devoted scientist. Denying her the right to do research was like taking away the most important thing in her life,” Dr. Wang said. Dr. Wang is a former president of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America (SCBA) said the research community had been devastated by Wu’s death.  “It’s hard to believe such a familiar and upbeat colleague has left us,” he said.

In March 2019, SCBA, the Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, and the Chinese Biological Investigators Society write an open letter to Science, titled "Racial Profiling Harms Science."    "[We] hope that ... increased security measures will not be used to tarnish law-abiding scientists ...," the letter said.

Molecular geneticist Adrian Krainer from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York said, “I remember her as a kind and caring person.  She was very devoted to training the next generation of scientists in both the US and China.”

Born in Hefei, Anhui province in 1963, Dr. Wu graduated from Shanghai Medical University in 1986 and went on to earn her doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University in the US.  She did postdoctoral research at Harvard University and spent a decade at Washington University in St Louis as an assistant and then associate professor in pediatrics, molecular biology and pharmacology before joining Northwestern University in 2005.

Northwestern University has not responded to multiple inquiries from the South China Morning Post since July 2024. Dr. Wu’s profile page on the medical school has disappeared. Other web pages, such as her publication and grant records on the Northwestern Scholar website, have also been deleted.  “The university’s reaction is rather unusual,” said a Chinese American biologist based in Ohio, who did not wish to be named. “Normally, the school or the university would publish an obituary and keep the faculty’s webpage for a period of time.”

Dr. Wu was buried in Chicago on July 17, 2024.  She was 60 years old.