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posted by martyb on Monday November 26 2018, @04:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the slippery-slope-became-a-cliff dept.

Genome-edited baby claim provokes international outcry

A Chinese scientist claims that he has helped make the world's first genome-edited babies — twin girls who were born this month. The announcement has provoked shock, and some outrage, among scientists around the world.

He Jiankui, a genome-editing researcher from the Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen, says that he implanted into a woman an embryo that had been edited to disable the genetic pathway that allows a cell to be infected with HIV.

In a video posted to YouTube, He says the girls are healthy and now at home with their parents. Genome sequencing of their DNA has shown that the editing worked, and only altered the gene they targeted, he says.

The scientist's claims have not been verified through independent genome testing or published in a peer-reviewed journal. But, if true, the birth would represent a significant — and controversial — leap in the use of genome-editing. So far these tools have only be used in embryos for research, often to investigate the benefit of using them to eliminate disease-causing mutations from the human germline. But reports of off-target effects in some studies have raised significant safety concerns.

Documents posted on China's clinical trial registry show that He used the ubiquitous CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing tool to disable a gene called CCR5, which forms a protein that allows HIV to enter a cell. Genome-editing scientist Fyodor Urnov was asked to review documents that described DNA sequence analysis of human embryos and fetuses gene-edited at the CCR5 locus for an article in MIT Technology Review. "The data I reviewed are consistent with the fact that the editing has, in fact, taken place," says Urnov, from the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in Seattle. But he says the only way to tell if the children's genomes have been edited is to independently test their DNA.

Also at STAT News:

The Chinese university where He is an associate professor issued a statement saying that it had been unaware of his research project and that He had been on leave without pay since February, Reuters reported. The work is a "serious violation of academic ethics and standards," Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen said in the statement. The university said it would immediately launch an investigation.

See also: As a genome editing summit opens in Hong Kong, questions abound over China, and why it quietly bowed out


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @09:42PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @09:42PM (#766640)

    Number of points
    1) no ethnical scientist can replicate because to do so would be unethical
    2) ever since CRSPR, scientists have worried about something like this because gene editing became almost too easy
    3) it was in Nature which is a 'respectable' source, you can bet they double checked a few things before publishing

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @11:03PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @11:03PM (#766688)

    1) How convenient for any scammers. Anyway, doesnt mean the methods and results cant be published.
    2) Did it beckme so easy? I havent seen that its become any easier than before, just a lot of hype that dropped off once crsp, ntla, and edit stocks started dumping.
    3) Nature (along with Science, Cell, PNAS, etc) is a tabloid that loves to publish exciting sounding stuff with worthless methods sections. The respectable sources are all field specific. To be fair Nature is 100x better now than 20 years ago though, mostly just because people can put stuff in an appendix.

    • (Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:27AM

      by redneckmother (3597) on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:27AM (#766798)

      ... mostly just because people can put stuff in an appendix.

      ... unless they've had an appendectomy.

      --
      Mas cerveza por favor.