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Chinese authorities say world's first gene-edited babies were illegal
Authorities in China say experiments which led to the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies broke the country's laws, state-run Xinhua news reported Monday. In November, Chinese scientist He Jiankui sparked international outrage when he announced that twin girls -- Lulu and Nana -- had been born with modified DNA to make them resistant to HIV. He later revealed a second woman was pregnant as a result of the research.
[...] On Monday, investigators from Guangdong Province Health Commission said that "the case has been initially identified as an explicitly state-banned human embryo-editing activity for reproductive purposes conducted by He Jiankui," Xinhua reported. The commission added that the scientist has conducted the work "In pursuit of personal fame and fortune, with self-raised funds and deliberate evasion of supervision and private recruitment of related personnel." The authorities also believe He forged both ethical review documents and blood tests to circumvent a ban on assisted reproduction for HIV-positive patients, state media reported.
[...] Authorities in China said He and any other people or institutions involved will be "dealt with seriously according to the law, and if suspected of crimes, they will be handed over to the public security bureau," according to Xinhua. "For the born babies and pregnant volunteers, Guangdong Province will work with relevant parties to perform medical observation and follow-up visits under the guidance of relevant state departments," Xinhua said, adding that born babies and pregnant volunteers will be monitored and followed-up with under the guidance of relevant state departments.
Where's the paper?
Also at TechCrunch and Newsweek.
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)
Chinese Scientist Who Allegedly Created the First Genome-Edited Babies is Reportedly Being Detained
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday January 21 2019, @07:59PM (7 children)
I made the assertion that it was good because the application was for legitimate medical reasons that posed life-threatening risks to patients, and all FUD about the "risks" of genome editing were stupid and facile in the face of actual application.
I would like to revise my position on the grounds that what I said was dumb, and any experimental medical treatment that forges ethics reviews is not an experimental treatment at all, and just insane human experimentation well outside the bounds of best practices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @08:30PM
Your blind trust in the review board is quite misguitded. The Chinese "ban on assisted reproduction for HIV-positive patients" is how the Chinese government is doing away with its poor, excess males, non-Han and homosexuals: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)31541-0/fulltext [thelancet.com]
There's a separate article about sex-ed and how the curriculum is broken down per province that similarly shows the poor are encouraged to practice unsafe sex with pills while the Han urbanites are told to use condoms.
It's such old news it got into the Warhammer 40k fluff in the Tau backstory a decade ago... And the evidence proving they're doing it keep piling up every population survey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @08:54PM (1 child)
How do we know he didn't forge the results? Until someone can follow his instructions and replicate this then who cares? Plus his results looked too good to be true since the "genetically modified" embryos actually survived better than normal ones. Since when does chopping up their dna lead to increased survival of embryos?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday January 21 2019, @09:06PM
Yeah, that's exactly why routine trivial violations of medical research process guidelines are enough to completely reverse my perception of the whole thing. Science, as a process, is more vulnerable to fraud and lax procedure than we usually give it credit for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @11:27PM
Thanks for revising your position. It is sad how rare that seems to be these days.
HIV was not a legitimate medical risk to the babies as the mother was HIV negative and, even if she were HIV positive, there are treatment protocols that substantially reduce vertical transmission. Furthermore, there was no need to edit the germline since the same method (mutating CCR5) can be and has been safely done in adult bone marrow.
If the disease were something untreatable and/or transmission could not be avoided (e.g. Huntington's disease or ALS), then there would at least be a risk/benefit point to be made for the babies but He Jiankui seems to have had other priorities than their well being.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15166829 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 22 2019, @01:05AM (2 children)
He Jiankui didn't perform a particularly valuable experiment. But the future is clear. It includes parents, or even lone individuals, designing the genomes of their customized children. And it won't be stopped.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @01:19AM (1 child)
It should be self limiting as the children will either not have the desired qualities or will also have strange rare diseases.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 22 2019, @01:52AM
CRISPR hasn't even been around (read: known to humans) for 20 years. Other techniques [fool.com] could replace it. He Jiankui wasn't even using the most state-of-the-art CRISPR techniques. Problems with accuracy and off-target mutations will eventually be a thing of the past. But even if they weren't, you could just edit many embryos until you get it right. Or you could create synthetic embryos with synthesized DNA, i.e. going from digital genetic code to a complete embryo that could be raised in an artificial womb. Desired qualities will become easier to manage as we learn more about the genome and start throwing machine learning and more advanced computers at the problem. We should reach a point where you input genetic code, and a computer shows you what the result would look like.
Check back in 10 years and see what the field looks like. And while it will be used by the rich first, I expect it will fall in cost until you could do it for a few thousand bucks (less if you already have the right equipment).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @08:04PM
http://boards.4channel.org/g/thread/69460068 [4channel.org]
(Also a picture of lain, who is a good girl)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @12:40AM (1 child)
Will born babies and pregnant volunteers be monitored and followed up with under the guidance of relevant state departments?
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday January 22 2019, @12:56AM
AFFIRMATIVE.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @12:45AM
I was kinda hoping China would be the birthplace of Khan, but now it is obvious, He Jiankui must travel to Mongolia to continue his work, all makes sense now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Tuesday January 22 2019, @01:33AM (2 children)
You don't give a loaded gun to a toddler and expect him not to fire it eventually.
Probably secret research has already produced human GMO. The stakes for military purposes are too high. BTW meddling with animal GMO for military purposes is not off the table either.
They even possibly poisoned the well with a myriad of youtube video showing fake modified humans, so that if some actual footage should surface, it would get lost in the noise. I posit this, as I posit that many older free energy videos were meant to be poisoning the well too, because people going to some length to prank people would eventually come out to grab the credits and have more fun, and that happens too rarely.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday January 22 2019, @02:18AM
Of course, nothing else would explain the Kardashians or Kanye, but I digress, the bots are evolving, us meatbags have to as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:37AM
If you think the current GMO technology is of any use to the military you're giving it way too much credit. The current tools are frankly crude and the knowledge of cell operation very insufficient. The day will certainly come but it will take a century.