Chinese Scientist Who Gene-Edited Babies Fired by University (reuters.com) 114
A Chinese scientist who created what he said were the world's first "gene-edited" babies evaded oversight and broke ethical boundaries in a quest for fame and fortune, state media said on Monday, as his former university said he had been fired.
From a report: He Jiankui said in November that he used a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls born that month, sparking an international outcry about the ethics and safety of such research. Hundreds of Chinese and international scientists condemned He and said any application of gene editing on human embryos for reproductive purposes was unethical. Chinese authorities also denounced He and issued a temporary halt to research activities involving the editing of human genes.
He had "deliberately evaded oversight" with the intent of creating a gene-edited baby "for the purpose of reproduction," according to the initial findings of an investigating team set up by the Health Commission of China in southern Guangdong province, Xinhua news agency reported. [...] The Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in the city of Shenzhen, said in a statement on its website that He had been fired.
He had "deliberately evaded oversight" with the intent of creating a gene-edited baby "for the purpose of reproduction," according to the initial findings of an investigating team set up by the Health Commission of China in southern Guangdong province, Xinhua news agency reported. [...] The Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in the city of Shenzhen, said in a statement on its website that He had been fired.
Good (Score:2)
Re: Good (Score:3, Interesting)
Unethical? I'm not so sure. What if gene editing is the only way we come up with to defeat some of the worst diseases in humanity? Cancer, ALS, Diabetes, heart disease. Was he wreckless? Sure. But is there a balance to be struck between the snails pace of government approved medical research Ana what he did? I think so.
How many lives would have been saved if we had less stringent rules in place for drug research? I read that the US caused tens of thousands of deaths because it hadn't approved beta-blockers
Re: Good (Score:5, Interesting)
When I think of unethical behavior and gene editing, I think of things like:
- Modifying genes so that certain aesthetic characters are artificially promoted (e.g. blue eyes, blonde hair)
- Certain skin tones (is that even possible? I dunno)
Things I would NOT consider unethical: - Eliminating diseases (sickle cell, popensity for cancers etc.)
Is that a bad thing? I'm a person of color and I'm not so sure it's a bad thing (tm).
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There is no doubt that his actions were not only sanctioned, but explicitly supported...until all the blow back from the world's scientific and ethics communities.
All this is just Xi Jinping cleaning up something that turned out to be an embarrassment instead of the triumph he was expecting.
People seem to forget or ignore the fact that China is an Authoritarian Dictatorship.
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Dictatorships ape capitalist freedom by giving people who make it look good on the world stage upgraded living conditions for their families. This applies to science and athletics.
This guy was geeked until the blowback that embarrassed the same system that minutes before was to reward him.
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There is no doubt that his actions were not only sanctioned, but explicitly supported...
Of course there are doubts.
I'm an example of doubt. Why would anyone (explicitly) support this?
People seem to forget or ignore the fact that China is an Authoritarian Dictatorship.
If it was supported it would have been in a big project, and he would not been fired now but promoted.
Yes. Bad because (Score:3)
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In 500 years everyone will have 37.5 penii and vajayjays, all aligned for one 4 hour ejaculation.
Every prediction in that is probably an underestimate.
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Modifying genes so that certain aesthetic characters are artificially promoted (e.g. blue eyes, blonde hair)
Eliminating diseases (sickle cell, popensity for cancers etc.)
Actually... BOTH of those things are in the same camp; I mean you could say "not having ideal beauty" is a disease that most of the population suffers, who gets to say sickle cell, etc, are the only special impediments that gene editing an be used to help with?
You intend to alter genetic material for one reason or another
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- Modifying genes so that certain aesthetic characters are artificially promoted (e.g. blue eyes, blonde hair) ... :P
The problem is that not everybody finds the same things aesthetic. My GF always wants to colour her hair blond. And wants me to encourage her to do it. I told her: one month in a year is ok
Seems the concept that I fell for a black haired woman and that I like to stay her black is a bit to complicated for her
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Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
There is one reason for the FDA having slow approval, thalidomide.
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That is a terrible reason. I'm not saying you are wrong, just commenting on that as justification for keeping potentially life-saving drugs off the market. There can be a cost to safety where the cost outweighs the benefit.
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And the one thing thalidomide proved was pushing it into pregnant women should be done with more care.
When the down side is death of middle-aged people from cancer and heart disease, the precautionary principle is trivially more murderous than World War II.
But deaths in front of the camera weigh more than millions of early deaths but-for inventions that were slowed down by regulation.
The math is brutal.
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Government approvals have little to do with it. The science isn't there yet. Every scientist I know thought that what he did was wildly inappropriate. He is a bad scientist.
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Since when is science not achieved though the scientific method? Pose a question. Make a hypothesis. Conduct an experiment to test your hypothesis. Analyze your results. Conclude.
What he did is unethical because "the science isn't there yet"? The science will never be there unless we learn through the scientific method.
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Gene editing itself isn't unethical. However unapproved and non-monitored experiments on humans is. Lets say I have a hypothesis that whisky can cure cancer, so I just go start injecting people with whisky and track them over a few decades and see if they get cancer, that would be unethical. However I use this hypothesis, go threw proper channels, start my studies on extracted cancer cells, understand what is happening, then with animals, then if that seems to be working correctly with approvals, peer rev
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I understand the ethical concerns, but to say "because it doesn't follow the scientific method" is horse shit. You'll have to try again. For all those who tried something that didn't work, no one told them "what you are trying is unethical".
This guy tried some experiment to test a hypothesis. So long as he conducted his experiments following the scientific method (something even non-scientists are taught in the 6th grade), then you can't chastise him on "scientific" grounds.
Furthermore, if he didn't get con
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However unapproved and non-monitored experiments on humans is.
Ok... so who is the representative of "god" that gets to decide Yes/No whether an idea can be tested on humans, and where the heck is the proof that they've been appointed as the person that gets to decide its morally OK to inject someone with stuff that humans have never been injected with before?
Because the fact is, there's always gotta be a first time for any successful treatment.
Disability benefits (Score:2)
so who is the representative of "god" that gets to decide Yes/No whether an idea can be tested on humans
My first guess is the parts of the government that pay for disability and medical entitlements. They may have to cover lifelong costs of the results of the experiment.
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My first guess is the parts of the government that pay for disability and medical entitlements.
Really, really bad idea. The people likely to volunteer for human testing are those that already have a major condition that causes disability and limits lifespan. The vested interest of those parts of the government, would be that these people die as soon as possible, so they would probably block research into possible cures that could extend lives.
Morals should NOT be defined by money. As for support c
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Those volunteering to be experimented upon should be required to carry adequate long term and short term disability and health insurance, so if they become disabled, they make the claim under their disability policy for full support
Good luck finding parents willing to foot the bill for private insurance in case a child resulting from genetic engineering ends up with a disability expected to last the child's entire life. How much would that even cost?
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How much would that even cost?
Until age 18, supporting their child up to adulthood is the parent's responsibility, so the monetary value of the initial loss is $0.
After adulthood: assuming the disability renders the person completely unemployable for the adult life, the loss over the years amounts to an annuity policy worth approximately $2 Million upfront.
The average annual wages of a gainfully employed adult human to be distributed every year after adulthood up to the number years of a human's life
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Until age 18, supporting their child up to adulthood is the parent's responsibility, so the monetary value of the initial loss is $0.
With the exception of parents who qualify for benefits from social safety net programs, such as WIC, SNAP, CHIP, TANF, Section 8, school lunch assistance, and special education. Ethics assessment for human germline genetic engineering would include estimating how resulting children may end up draining these programs. Or are you anticipating a provision that disqualifies parents of children resulting from experimental genetic engineering from receiving these entitlements, analogous to the "Stop BEZOS" propos [slashdot.org]
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Or are you anticipating a provision that disqualifies parents of children resulting from experimental genetic engineering from receiving these entitlements
No... Those parent would be disqualified from participating in an experiment that involves them having a child.
The researcher should require proof that the parents can financially support the child and maintain the requisite protective insurance
policies before being allowed to participate in research that involves a parent becoming pregnant (whether
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The researcher should require proof that the parents can financially support the child and maintain the requisite protective insurance
policies before being allowed to participate in research that involves a parent becoming pregnant
Good luck proving that neither parent will subsequently lose a job. How much would private long-term unemployment insurance cost?
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Good luck proving that neither parent will subsequently lose a job.
At that point the issue has nothing to do with the research, and its the person's responsibility
who represented that they were choosing to become pregnant and have a child anyways, however
due to the hereditary disease risks they'd like to volunteer to participate in the research --
ANY couple who decided to get pregnant for any reason would be in the same predicament
regarding supporting the child, And the cost of the life-sustaining esse
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should be able to get and retain a replacement job
How much does insurance to pay for retraining (note additional R) in case of job loss cost?
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Unethical? I'm not so sure. What if gene editing is the only way we come up with to defeat some of the worst diseases in humanity? Cancer, ALS, Diabetes, heart disease.
Yes, and China is generally more aware of the long-term need for edgy tech like this than the US and especially Europe. But intentionally faking approvals to rush changes into the human germline is the kind of ethics breach that if anything goes wrong can easily backfire against the technology as a whole. Furthermore, Jiankui's edit was not knocking out one disease-causing point mutation, the obvious first goal of a germline edit. Instead he blocked a major gene that normally powers parts of the human immun
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IIRC, the ethical issue here relates to informed consent and "is ready for human trials," not because it's gene editing per se.
Reckless = unethical (Score:2)
Unethical? I'm not so sure......Was he wreckless? Sure.
I am: being reckless with human lives is unethical.
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I'm all for safety for drugs reaching the public, but surely we can quicken the pace in the research field far before it becomes publically available?
I'm not sure the victims of thalidomide would agree with you on that one.
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Unethical? ...
Because technology is not proven to be safe yet and now there are two girls, who might die early due to e.g. cancer. CRISPS Cas9 does it's jobs, but sometimes does more than indented cutting off more then programmed.
Another issue is that this was done without proper procedure and completely not needed for the girls (they father has HIV, but there are medications now to keep the virus from reaching infection level not to mention that HIV is not easy to be transmitted anyway) - other diseases like e.g. Hunti [wikipedia.org]
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That is assuming that he would be allowed to leave China.
China has high-tech public shaming system. That uses facial recognition to let everyone around you know that you have somehow shamed China, thus you should be shunned. Businessmen have been put on this list for things like late payment of their bills.
Being the high visibility of this guy got, he is up for a tough life now on. China may not give him a ticket out of the country, because they would just want to continue the shaming.
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I thought the Chinese government was going to execute his ass.
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The Western media should also tell you Iraq has WMDs.... oh, they did so already.
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Re:ppftt (Score:4, Funny)
Forget super babies, can they make catgirls yet?
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Forget super babies, can they make catgirls yet?
That's the Japanese, not the Chinese. Or at least not so much...
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Or hired by the Indian government to make a superior clone of Ricardo Montalban or Benedict Cumberbatch.
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Why? (Score:3)
Don't get me wrong this is a line we couldn't ethically cross but since he already crossed it... we should see the results and gather the data. Slap an ankle bracelet on him and have the facility take over his expenses so the lights stay on but he doesn't profit or have someone else pick up his work.
There are potentially some amazing advances that could come from this line of research.
Also, do you honestly think the likes of Putin and other regimes don't have underground activities of this sort ongoing but obviously can't publish. The genie is out of the bottle. I would be surprised if the US military doesn't have secret programs along these lines going already.
Re: (Score:2)
"I don't think so. This is no different than genetically engineering crops. Eliminating disease, making people smarter, taller, or whatever is perfectly fine. And I think gene editing is the only way the human race can advance beyond our ape heritage."
We don't understand what we are doing well enough. One day we might crack the code well enough to reliably do those things but we are nowhere near that. At present what we are doing is more like gathering up a bunch of pottery and smashing it up and making mos
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ugh, it would be really nice if slashdot had an edit function.
"I don't think so. This is no different than genetically engineering crops. Eliminating disease, making people smarter, taller, or whatever is perfectly fine. And I think gene editing is the only way the human race can advance beyond our ape heritage."
We don't understand what we are doing well enough. One day we might crack the code well enough to reliably do those things but we are nowhere near that. At present what we are doing is more like gathering up a bunch of pottery and smashing it up to make mosaics. Most of the field runs on the assumption they don't need to understand how it works, they can just use the pieces that are already out there and combine them in new ways. They are half right, there is a huge library of genetic information already out there but humanity definitely needs to understand how it works. The individual doing the combining won't need to in the end but only because they are working from rules and primitives defined by people with a better understanding.
Look at STDs already in the wild and our success at getting rid of them. We can't even stop the ones that kill off the people who get them. Changes like this could sterilize whole populations, changes like you suggest could have impacts that don't surface until several generations later. Not everything happens right away you know. Almost every gene we study enough turns out to be connected in a complicated web with other biologic functions.
Our understanding of the effects of what we are doing and what we are doing is probably on par with the drug industry circa 1780ce.
"This is no different than genetically engineering crops."
And would you feel that way if you were the subject rather the subsequent beneficiary of the experiment? Make no mistake, this is a well established phenomenon with medicine. There is a very real slippery slope and in the end it isn't you who will decide what you or your subsequent offspring are subjected to but the interests of "the greater good." Those might be contrary to the interests of nearly every individual who makes up the greater population. People all too quickly lose sight of the fact that the group is nothing but a collection of individuals and the logic you support which screws over another individual will be turned against you sooner or later.
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"The big problem with "We don't understand what we are doing well enough" is that the "design" of evolved life is not decomposable. There are no clean boundaries between things, everything is emergent. So one small change here could have absolutely unpredictable consequences over there."
Which is exactly why we should not be using ourselves to test on. One unpredicted error in the wrong place and we've wiped out entire species. Hell that risk is even real tweaking other things.
Our best bet isn't really genet
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Yep, there's nothing the U.S. Military might not have a secret program for. I hear they want to put a micro-chip in your brain so that you can be told which fast food joint to frequent. It could happen right? Hell, they can do anything, even create wormholes on demand...and black holes, think of the black hole programs they must have...or...or...Dark Energy, do you think Joe Biden is moving entirely on his own power at his age?
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Hardly but you know declassified documents disclosed under an FOIA request revealed the military TRIED to do most of the above and a link to coverage was posted on this very site just a couple days ago. The military controls almost all the US 'public' research spending.
This isn't a crazy conspiracy, this is freely available and published technology.
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"At least in the US there's a history of these kind of projects"
There is a pretty well established history for both actually. I'm certainly not claiming the US are the good guys vs Russia who are the bad guys, Putin, China, North Korea are all countries with a long public record of being bad actors and there is little to no credible dispute of that. People do dispute the US, especially on a US forum like this one. As seen by someone replying and trying to paint the suggestion as a crackpot conspiracy theory
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"Would you be OK that you are forced to be in the study without any chance to contest the decision?"
There is no requirement that the child be given no choice once they are able to consent. There is also no reason an advocate and court can't be used to represent their interests in the meantime.
There is a reasonable middle ground here.
In evaluation-driven U.S. culture (Score:2)
A student doesn't need to shimmy up to the window to turn in a late assignment because the instructor will accept a late assignment, on any excuse offered or for no excuse at all?
He had "deliberately evaded oversight"... (Score:2)
He has a really confusing first name for english readers.
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If it helps, it's pronounced differently from the pronoun "he".
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It doesn't help at all since both are written as "He", dumbass.
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Strange goings on behind the scenes (Score:1)
He's group website had PDFs relating to the approval of his research. The wayback machine provides us with a handy view just before he announced his GM children and got silenced. Later that approval was retroactively withdrawn.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181126212100/http://www.sustc-genome.org.cn/source/pdf/HarmoniCare-Ethics-English.pdf
From what I can gather, this was a privately owned hospital providing "ethical approval" for government sponsored research. I find it hard to believe he was operating wit
Poisoning the well (Score:2)
This guy was not fired for gene editing babies (Score:4, Insightful)
He was fired for being dumb enough to admit it / being caught.
fired & hired (Score:2)
fired from the university
hired by the army.