When asked about how the third child was doing, He replied: “I’m not answering this question,” later adding that the child was “living a normal life living with their parents”. “We respect patient privacy and, for me, I put the happiness of the family first and the science discovery second.” “Lulu and Nana are living a normal, peaceful, undisturbed life and we should respect them,” he said. He claims to have maintained contact with the twins’ family, but would not say whether he was involved in their clinical follow-up or when he last saw them. He declined to say where he served the sentence or give any details of his experience. He was found guilty of “illegal medical practices” and sentenced to three years in prison. He’s unpublished data indicated concerning evidence of “off-target” effects, unwanted genetic changes that can carry a risk of heart defects, cancer and developmental problems. Many expressed shock at the use of a risky, untested procedure in circumstances where there was no unmet medical need. View image in fullscreen An embryo receives injections at a laboratory in Shenzhen, China. The edit, of a gene called CCR5, targeted a pathway used by the HIV virus to enter cells, and was claimed to give the babies immunity to HIV. It later emerged that a third gene-edited baby had been born. Some question whether such a step could ever be medically justified.Īgainst this backdrop, He dropped the bombshell at an international conference in Hong Kong four years ago that he had modified two embryos before they were placed in their mother’s womb. But genetically modifying embryos was – and is – far more ethically contentious, because changes are made to every cell in the body and are passed down to subsequent generations. Gene-edited cells were already beginning to be used in clinical treatments for adults. He returned to China in 2012 to pursue Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing research, launching a variety of biotechnology business ventures. He studied physics in China before moving to the US to study for a PhD at Rice University and a post-doctorate in genome sequencing at Stanford University. He declined to elaborate on what he believed ought to have been in place before proceeding with gene editing, but said he would give further details at an invited talk he is scheduled to give at the University of Oxford next month. However, he stopped short of expressing regret or apologising, saying “I need more time to think about that” and “that’s a complicated question”. To summarise it up in one sentence: I did it too quickly.” Speaking to the Guardian in one of his first interviews since his public re-emergence last year, He said: “I’ve been thinking about what I’ve done in the past for a long time.
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