Shenzhen, China – The Chinese scientist who says he helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies veered off a traditional career path, keeping much…
Shenzhen, China – The Chinese scientist who says he helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies veered off a traditional career path, keeping much of his research secret in pursuit of a larger goal – making history.
He Jiankui’s outsized aspirations began to take shape in 2016, the year after another team of Chinese researchers sparked global debate with the revelation that they had altered the DNA of human embryos in the lab. He soon set his mind on pushing the boundaries of medical ethics even further.
The China-born, U. S.-trained scientist once confided to his former Stanford University adviser his interest in gene-edited babies. He told The Associated Press last month that he had been working on the experiment for more than two years – a period in which, by his own account, he concealed information from some medical staff involved in the research, as well as apparently from his own bosses.
He took advantage of the loosely worded and irregularly enforced regulations and generous funding available today in China, in some cases skirting even local protocols and possibly laws.
“The enormous ambition in China, the desire to be the first, collides with the desire to create and enforce standards,” said Jing-Bao Nie, an expert on Chinese bioethics at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
On the eve of an international gene-editing summit in Hong Kong this week, the 34-year-old scientist stunned the world by claiming he had used the powerful CRISPR gene-editing tool to alter the DNA of twin girls born earlier this month. His claim could not be independently confirmed, and it has not been published in a journal, but it drew swift outrage from both researchers and regulators.
Mainstream scientists in China and globally said the experiment should never have been tried.
“They chose to short-circuit the entire process. They went rogue,” said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene-editing expert.
China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, reported Tuesday that He may be investigated by the Ministry of Science and Technology, if the births are confirmed.
His career trajectory did not follow the expected script. He did not publish most of his earlier research on modifying mice and monkey DNA, as most scientists would have done. And the way he advanced his latest study included questionable decisions on secrecy and medical ethics.
“If you’re going to do something this controversial and this early, and you want to be the leader of this movement, you want to do it in an exemplary way,” said Dr. Eric Topol, who heads the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California.
He, who says his parents were farmers, was born in 1984 in southern China.
