Posted on 04/09/2025 8:22:24 AM PDT by EBH
A Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for his role in creating the world’s first genetically edited babies says he has returned to his laboratory to work on the treatment of Alzheimer’s and other genetic diseases.
In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, He Jiankui said he had resumed research on human embryo genome editing, despite the controversy over the ethics of artificially rewriting genes, which some critics predicted would lead to demand for “designer babies”.
“We will use discarded human embryos and comply with both domestic and international rules,” He told the Mainichi Shimbun, adding that he had no plans to produce more genome-edited babies. Previously, He had used a tool known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite DNA in embryos.
In 2019 a court in China sentenced He to three years in prison for violating medical regulations after he claimed the previous year that he had created genetically modified twin sisters, Lulu and Nana, before birth.
His experiments sent shockwaves through the medical and scientific world. He was widely condemned for having gone ahead with the risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified procedure with inadequate consent from the families involved.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The modified embryo would yield HIV resistant children.
What’s next for the gene-edited children from CRISPR trial in China? https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25533930-700-whats-next-for-the-gene-edited-children-from-crispr-trial-in-china/
MORE than a billion people live in China, but researchers in the country have proposed the creation of a healthcare institute to look after just three: Amy and twins Lulu and Nana. These three children are the first genetically engineered humans in history.
Known publicly only by these pseudonyms, as embryos their genomes were edited using CRISPR technology by scientist He Jiankui in an effort to prevent them contracting HIV from their fathers. After announcing the experiment to the world in 2018, He was denounced as highly unethical. He was imprisoned in China in 2019 and was released in April this year.
The children are now toddlers, and as they grow up the scientific community faces a complex dilemma: how to care for their well-being and any fallout from He’s experiment, while also respecting their private lives.
So about now they should be school age.
“ A Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for his role in creating the world’s first genetically edited babies…”
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His mistake was modifying some of the baby’s genes to be DIRE WOLF variants. Of course now he can look back and say “what was I thinking”. /sarc
Disgusting.
We didn’t want a dire cro-magnon baby?
Giant step for science?
I’d be semi-okay if there was an actual workable genetic remedy for scoliosis and other genetic health conditions.
But research on that topic is a barrier you cannot cross. So the whole thing is wrong in my mind.
Well in the second article it seems to indicate that there were “mistakes’ made in parts of the sequences. They are finding odd changes in the cells that seem to indicate these children are not super-beings.
Because this is how we get Khan Noonien Singh.
Why would these toddlers be contracting HIV from their fathers?
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