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Chinese scientist who allegedly created the first genetically engineered babies is being detained
The Chinese scientist who shocked the world with claims of creating the first genetically engineered babies is being detained in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to a report in The New York Times.
[...] The Southern University of Science and Technology, based in Shenzhen, has denied the reporting around Dr. He's whereabouts and fate, telling the Times, "Right now nobody's information is accurate, only the official channels are." Meanwhile, the official channels are staying silent.
Reporters found security personnel blocking access to the residence where Dr. He is reportedly staying and others denying access to the former offices Dr. He used to conduct his research. The scientist's name and biography remains on a board listing staff in the university’s biology department.
Previously: Chinese Scientist Claims to Have Created the First Genome-Edited Babies (Twins)
Furor Over Genome-Edited Babies Claim Continues (Updated)
Chinese Gene-Editing Scientist's Project Rejected for WHO Database (Plus: He Jiankui is Missing)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2018, @03:48AM (7 children)
The experiment was unnecessary, from a therapeutic standpoint, and ignored the known off-target mutation rate problem with CRISPR-based gene editing.
There are also already proven-effective versions of such editing in adult hematopoietic stem cells, so it was also unessesary to edit the germ line.
Any patient who would be properly informed would not provide consent and any scientist in the field should know better.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday December 31 2018, @04:00PM (6 children)
Immunization trials are never therapeutically necessary. The whole point is to take a healthy person and give them resistance to something they're not infected with yet.
As for the risks, I'm not a doctor. I've heard the same claims about mutations and whatnot. But for all I know those risk assessments came from industry researchers being paid to manufacture research to support regulations and moratoriums that would serve the big pharma industry rather than the patients. Look up the book I've linked earlier. They've done exactly that with other drugs before. Their regulatory capture only gotten worse in recent years so I don't see any reason to trust their opinions over other researchers. Him included.
Informed consent isn't realistic nowadays. Most times doctors can't even tell you the statistical odds of any given complication let alone explain the science behind the simplest antibiotics course. Do you think any of the African or South Asian test subjects in big pharma test labs can be properly informed? Those volunteers can barely read and right if at all and for all they know they're being injected with magic goo. Real researchers know this which is why no one is really being too outspoken against what he did. And it's not even clear if they weren't informed about the risks to begin with...
Overall, it's an advanced field with lots of money flowing and heavy regulatory capture so we shouldn't let the industry tell the researchers what and what not to study. And we definitely shouldn't assume our western leading scientists are a better authority than the average lab coat. Nine out of ten times, those guys got to where they are by kissing asses and being the good friends to the industry in the same tradition that got doctors to recommend cigarettes against coughing and stress relief.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2018, @05:59PM (5 children)
The risks and complications associated with vaccination are well known and has more than two hundred years worth of history. The risks are balanced by their benefit to the patient and the hazards are prepared for (e.g. anti-inflammatory drugs). Vaccines are also tested in vitro, various animal models, informed and healthy adult volunteers, and undergo various quality control assessments.
Since we don't know all the details, I'll give some basic background information then point out some simple conceptual issues.
The disease of target was AIDS.
HIV, which causes AIDS, is a virus that causes infectious disease by killing T cells. Mutation in one of the co-receptors that HIV uses to enter T cells is known to prevent HIV-infected individuals from progressing to AIDS (long-term non-progressors). Since HIV infects T cells and T cells come from the bone marrow, various researchers (John Rossi to name one) have already demonstrated that you can safely edit (using less broadly mutagenic prone techniques) or deliver genes that accomplish this in the bone marrow of HIV-infected adults. This is a relatively extreme intervention because there are plenty of antiviral drugs, but the drugs have side effects and require a complicated treatment regimen.
Some issues:
CRISPR-mediated genome editing is known to produce an unacceptably high number of various off-target edits in cultured cells, animals, and human embryos. Mutations are known to increase the risk of cancer development and, in a case like this, various congenital disorders.
HIV is one of the worst possible test cases for this type of experiment because in can be avoided, it can be prevented, it can be treated with drugs, and it can be treated through gene editing of bone marrow. All this would still be true even if both parents were HIV-positive, since antiviral therapy can prevent vertical transmission.
If the disease was Huntington's disease, then there would be less of an issue because the treatment options are basically completely ineffective, its genetic determinant is known, and there is no reasonably effective way of editing the affected neuronal cells post-development. An increased risk of other congenital diseases or cancer could be balanced against the, otherwise, certainty of Huntington's disease. However, even in this case, any scientist following the field would know that methods have been and are rapidly being developed that can substantially reduce the off-target mutation rate of CRISPR-editing and that it would be irresponsible, without extreme circumstances, to not postpone the experiment until the mutation rate falls below an acceptable threshold or the refined methods approach a point of diminishing returns.
How did you get that number? It certainly wasn't from any personal experience in the field or study.
Academics look down upon industry researchers and they have no reason to kiss their ass because the NIH grant review process, academic societies (ASM, AAI, AAAS, etc.), and peer review are all run by fellow academics.
Also, you should keep in mind that CRISPR-editing is not some cheap and trivial technique that will disrupt the profit of pharma/biotech while providing low-cost cures to everyone. Pharma/biotech companies are actually heavily pushing for all this because there are billions of dollars to be made for those that make it to the market and some doctor in Shenzhen doing it first will only affect that negatively if he gets too much negative press for something going wrong (e.g. what happened to the early SCID gene therapy trial).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14564000 [nih.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_severe_combined_immunodeficiency#Treatments [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 31 2018, @06:25PM (2 children)
This point is often missed.
I am still supportive of Jiankui because IDGAF, but it's clear that the state-of-the-art in 5 years will look very different and a lot more reliable than whatever method he used.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2018, @07:02PM (1 child)
The big picture consequentialist reason I'm against it is because this kind of recklessness promotes more distrust in scientists and reinforces the "mad scientist" stereotype. These perspectives already negatively shape the public's opinions on scientific topics and causes uninformed reactionary policies (ban on embryonic stem cell funding, moratorium on gain-of-function research, HPV vaccination, etc.). I don't want the "playing god", "it's eugenics", "no designer babies", etc. crowds to have any more ammo to oppose the progress of treatments that could actually eliminate congenital diseases.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 31 2018, @10:48PM
When the relevant technologies become orders of magnitude cheaper, as they have started to, it is inevitable that the "mad scientist" will rise up.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday December 31 2018, @10:38PM (1 child)
They're known now. They weren't known then.
Those weren't around when the first trials began. For most drugs, there isn't a magic undo button. That's what the testing is for.
Bull: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28348039 [nih.gov]
Animal trials prove or disprove little. If a trial fails it doens't mean the drug is unsafe to humans. If the drugs succeeds it doesn't mean it's safe for humans. It's not even a good indication of either. It's just a method to make trials more expensive. Which, to itself, could be said to prevent some clowns from testing crazy shit and thus reduce risks. But there better ways to achieve that. And more to the point, the guy already did animal trials and was still rejected for reasons unspecified.
Known by whom? They've been editing plants since CRISPR day 1 and livestock for nearly the last 5 years. The FDA is holding back the imports but it's already sold overseas. Maybe they can't prevent the mutations. But have you considered the possibility the guy actually knows what he's doing for a living and have a good way to test for their existence of mutations before taking the next step and moving forwards with the pregnancy? I'm not in his field. But if someone who never coded a line in his life came over and told me to stop doing this and that since it's "unsafe" I know I wouldn't listen to him.
How do you prevent infected blood packs? *You* being the key here. Cause the whole point of mass immunization (CRISPR or otherwise) is to make sure society doesn't fall apart to some infection when one guy decided washing their hands / reporting in for an exam / wearing a condom was too bothersome.
Besides, it's not a test case for public relations. It's research for medicine. Why should Africa wait when they have whole countries with families falling apart due to AIDS and no money for treatments? You're saying the risk isn't worth it. I can guarantee you there's a good 20million out there that would rather see a child or two die from a random mutation in their first decade of life than see two or three die in their mid 20s. China been covering up their HIV infection rates for a while now. Have you considered maybe the guy knows something you don't? That maybe the real risks are in waiting for some technical advancement that may or may not come from the west instead of moving forwards with this now?
That's the equivalent of GM's historic electric vehicle prototypes. They're investing in the patents and copyright in-order to prevent commercialization by competing startups. We've seen it in every other industry including pharma as they encounter disruptive technologies and practices. I don't understand what makes you think it's any different this time.
Overall, stop making assumptions regarding risks or the variables. We don't have all the facts. We barely have any facts. His fellow researchers might not even understand everything he did and are busy reading the papers he released. As previously said, there plenty of scenarios where everything he did can be justified. The only thing we know is that industries have long histories of delaying scientific progress to improve their bottom lines and there's absolutely no reason to take their sides when they have shit tons of marketeers and shills doing it for them.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @12:14AM
I don't really know what you are trying to do with this analogy, but if you are trying to argue that CRISPR-mediated germline editing is like the initial vaccination "trials" performed two hundred years ago or variolation "trials" five hundred years ago then it's not going to provide any useful insight.
First of all, did you actually read the paper? The paper in no way disprove the utility of preclinical trials. Preclinical animal trials happen to be dirt cheap, so I have no idea why you think they substantially affect the expense of the drug development process.
I don't even know where to start with the rest of your post. It is clear that you lack the familiarity with the academic literature on the topics of HIV, HIV treatment and public health, and gene editing.
Briefly:
The off-target mutation problem is well established in the academic literature (hell, it has been covered here many times) and there are lots of patents on processes that lower the rate.
You can lower the off-target rate by various means (e.g. careful design and screening of gRNA sequences and alterations to Cas9).
It's unlikely that the doctor has quietly solved the problems single-handedly.
If I had to personally do it, I'd order primers and do a RT-PCR to detect HIV RNA and an ELISA for HIV antibodies.
CRISPR-mediated germline editing plus IVF is not even close to mass immunization. This is not even remotely close to a low-cost solution to HIV in China or Africa.
This is definitely not the same as electric cars.
My reasons for skepticism, instead of your incredibly optimistic assumptions, are based on the published evidence and knowledge of the fields involved.