Authorities say they were not told about the controversial experiment that researchers claim to have carried out in ChinaResearch to switch off HIV-related gene not independently verified
A Chinese scientist’s claim that he has created the world’s first gene-edited children has caught health regulators flat-footed and triggered a flood of condemnation from research bodies.
He Jiankui, from Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, said in a YouTube video posted online on Monday that healthy twin sisters were born in China earlier this month from embryos he and a team of researchers modified to switch off an HIV-related gene.
Chinese health officials said they were unaware of the controversial experiment.
“We just saw it on internet. We are equally shocked as everybody else,” an official in charge of medical ethics evaluation at the National Health Commission said. “We are completely in the dark.”
The commission is the highest authority on health-related issues in the country and can stop any experiment deemed unsafe or unethical.
The research is controversial because of the risk that children born using it could die from unknown side effects and the technology could be abused.
China is developing a wide range of controversial technology from using children to develop AI-powered killer robots, to deadly artificial viruses to modify human genes.
He’s announcement comes just days before he is expected to speak about human embryo editing at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the University of Hong Kong, which starts on Tuesday. He has not published any research paper on the project so the work has yet to be peer-reviewed or independently verified.
David Baltimore, president emeritus of the California Institute of Technology and chairman of the summit organising committee, said He had not informed the organising committee about the research.
“What he will say I have no idea and I don’t know what he will cover but he has been quoted in the press as having done experiments that would involve the changing of human genes and he may well talk about that,” Baltimore said.
He Jiankui said the father of the newborns, identified only as Lulu and Nana, was HIV-positive and the gene was edited to prevent the children from contracting the virus.
