He Jiankui
The He Jiankui affair is a scientific and bioethical circumstance concerning the use of gene-editing technique in human cases following the first use by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who made the first genome-edited babies in 2018.[1][2] The affair led to legal and ethical controversies with an indictment of He and his two collaborators, Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou.
He Jiankui, working at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, started a project to help people with fertility problems, specifically involving HIV-positive fathers and HIV-negative mothers. The subjects were offered standard in vitro fertilisation services and in addition, use of CRISPR gene editing (CRISPR/Cas9), a technology for modifying DNA. Specifically, the embryos were edited of their CCR5 gene in an attempt to confer genetic resistance to HIV.[3] The clinical project was conducted secretly until 25 November 2018 when MIT Technology Review exposed the story about the human experiment based on information from the Chinese clinical trials registry. Compelled by the situation, He immediately announced the birth of genome-edited babies in a series of five videos on YouTube the same day.[4][5] The first babies, known by their pseudonyms Lulu (Chinese: ??) and Nana (Chinese: ??), are twin girls born in October 2018, and the second birth or the third baby born was in 2019.He reported that the babies were born healthy.
The He Jiankui affair is a scientific and bioethical circumstance concerning the use of gene-editing technique in human cases following the first use by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who made the first genome-edited babies in 2018.[1][2] The affair led to legal and ethical controversies with an indictment of He and his two collaborators, Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou.
He Jiankui, working at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, started a project to help people with fertility problems, specifically involving HIV-positive fathers and HIV-negative mothers. The subjects were offered standard in vitro fertilisation services and in addition, use of CRISPR gene editing (CRISPR/Cas9), a technology for modifying DNA. Specifically, the embryos were edited of their CCR5 gene in an attempt to confer genetic resistance to HIV.[3] The clinical project was conducted secretly until 25 November 2018 when MIT Technology Review exposed the story about the human experiment based on information from the Chinese clinical trials registry. Compelled by the situation, He immediately announced the birth of genome-edited babies in a series of five videos on YouTube the same day.[4][5] The first babies, known by their pseudonyms Lulu (Chinese: ??) and Nana (Chinese: ??), are twin girls born in October 2018, and the second birth or the third baby born was in 2019.He reported that the babies were born healthy.
