“China’s Frankenstein” has not been seen since an international summit in Hong Kong last week.
Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of a Chinese scientist who claimed to have produced the world’s first gene-edited babies.
He Jiankui appeared in Hong Kong last week at the second International Summit on Human Genome Editing and has not been seen since.
He was called “China’s Frankenstein” after he released a video on YouTube in which he claimed that his team had modified the embryos of two sisters to switch off an HIV-related gene because their father had the virus.
He Jiankui at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, on November 28. His whereabouts are unknown since the summit took place. ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images
The claim sparked controversy and criticism among the medical community. Scientists said implanting such an embryo was a boundary that should not be crossed until the associated risks were known and eliminated.
