By John “CZ” Czwartacki
More than 30 years ago, when I was just 23 years old, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). At the time, I had no idea what my future would hold, especially as there wasn’t a single treatment available for patients like me.
Thankfully new and innovative medicines came to market, providing me with the life I could never have dreamed of when sitting in my doctor’s office three decades ago. These treatments helped slow my disease’s progression, giving me the career, family, and life I am blessed with today.
When you live with a progressive disease like MS, every new treatment matters, because the disease doesn’t wait.
And right now, some federal policy decisions threaten that progress.
Last December, Congress passed the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act, giving the Treasury Department authority to restrict certain U.S. investments in sensitive Chinese technology sectors (like CHIPS, AI, and hypersonic systems) over national security concerns. While protecting national security is incredibly important, unfortunately, Treasury is proposing these restrictions extend into medical and biotechnology development and innovation, threatening the very treatments patients like me need.
Applying investment limits too broadly to include sectors not originally intended to be included in the law threatens to disrupt the very pipeline of pharmaceutical innovation American patients depend on, a pipeline that, when restricted, directly undermines the health of the patients we are trying to protect. If the cure for M.S. is discovered in China, I want an American company to bring that treatment here to the United States.
It is standard practice for American pharmaceutical companies to partner with researchers around the world, China included. American researchers and pharmaceutical companies take the early-stage science developed in those partnerships and test and refine it to deliver new treatments to American patients.
If the Treasury blocks these partnerships, the science will not stop, we just won’t be able to access them. Chinese institutions will keep developing therapies, just without the American patient in mind. Patients across Europe and the rest of the world will benefit, while Americans will be left sick and waiting.
Right now, researchers at Huazhong University in China are developing an in vivo CAR-T cell immunotherapy to treat MS and other autoimmune conditions. That exact science could help stop the progression of my disease. The COINS Act threatens to pull that treatment out of reach for millions of Americans, many of whom cannot afford to wait.
While some of the research is done in China, the finished treatments are manufactured here in the U.S. or in Europe. Data from trade figures show that we actually export more finished medicine to China than we import. Cutting American developers off from promising, collaborative global science does not make our country safer. It deprives patients of options and hope when they need them most.
Thirty years ago, I had no treatment options for my condition. Today, I’m living a full life because science kept moving forward, giving me access to breakthroughs I could not have imagined. That science doesn’t stop at borders. By keeping COINS Act restrictions focused on real security threats, Treasury and Congress can protect national security and patients at the same time.