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China Science

Chinese Scientist Who Edited Babies' Genes Sentenced To Prison (bloomberg.com) 186

The Chinese scientist who created the world's first genetically altered babies has been sentenced to three years in prison and a lifelong ban from working in reproductive technology, state media reported on Monday. From a report: He Jiankui, a Shenzhen researcher who drew widespread condemnation when he revealed his experiment last year, will also have to pay a 3 million yuan ($430,000) fine, said a report from Xinhua News Agency, citing the verdict of a court in the southern Chinese city. Two others who assisted him were also sentenced. Zhang Renli, a researcher at the Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, received a prison term of two years and Qin Jinzhou, a researcher at the Shenzhen Luohu Hospital Group, received a term of 18 months, suspended for two years. The verdict is China's first public statement on the fate of He, who disappeared from public view after his 2018 experiment sparked a global backlash. His work to edit the genes of embryos to make babies who are resistant to the virus that causes AIDS was sharply critiqued by the international scientific community as an abuse of new gene-engineering methods that are still not fully understood.
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Chinese Scientist Who Edited Babies' Genes Sentenced To Prison

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  • Now undo what he did ...

  • by michaelni ( 5226911 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @02:15PM (#59571316)
    From the linked article.
    "The court found that He and the two others had forged ethical review documents and used “impersonating and concealing tactics” on unsuspecting doctors to complete their experiment, said the report."
  • by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @02:17PM (#59571328)

    Every scientist: "This is an outage and a complete abomination of all ethics and morality... ...did it work?"

    • Everyone: "This is unacceptable and unfair! Generating a two class society! And the ones with the advantages ... won't be MY kids!"

      Give it to everyone, and prove you do fairly, and everyone will be fine with it. Maybe a bit of theatralics for show ... but fine.
      Wanna bet?
      (The catch is that nobody will believe it is fair, unless they themselves got obvious massive unfair advantages. ;)

    • by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @02:50PM (#59571448) Journal

      Every scientist: "This is an outage and a complete abomination of all ethics and morality... ...did it work?"

      The answer is No.

      He’s stated goal was to give the children born from his experiment genes for a protein called CCR5 with 32 base pairs deleted. This mutation, called CCR532, seems to protect some northern Europeans from infection with HIV. Yet soon after the announcement of his “success” in November 2018, some experts noted that the likely benefits were smaller than advertised, since He had given neither of the twins that specific gene edit. According to He’s own analysis, his CRISPR treatment yielded mutations in CCR5 that had never before been seen in humans — meaning the effectiveness of the edit against HIV infection and its safety were unknown.

      Adding to his sins, He knew after the gene editing — but before the embryos were transferred to their mother’s uterus — that one of the twins, whom he called Lulu, had a normal CCR5 allele on one copy of her chromosome 3 and an edited version on the other copy, greatly undercutting any protection she might have received. The other twin, called Nana, had two edited copies, but neither of them was CCR532. We can only hope that the girls, whose real names and identities have been shielded, remain healthy.

      https://www.statnews.com/2019/... [statnews.com]

      • I donâ(TM)t believe the effect is unknown. He caused a frame shift in both copies of the genes in one of the babies. A frame shift yields a stop codon quickly. Therefore it will effectively disable the gene the same as CCR5delta32 does. In other words it can be considered successful in my opinion. That baby should have resistance to many (though definitely not all) of the HIV strains in circulation as of 2019.

        The other baby is a homozygote (only one of the two gene copies were modified, and that too a

    • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @03:07PM (#59571508)

      It worked in one of the babies, not both.

      Technically, he didn't recreate CCR5delta32 (which is the name of the most common HIV resistance mutation) -- he didn't even attempt it in what I would even call a half-ass manner in my opinion (ie, he didn't try it using HDR). However according to the presented data, he did get a frame shift on both alleles in one of the babies, so that's will with 99.99999999% probability have the same effect as CCR5delta32 in my opinion -- in spite of what other fools think. That kid should be immune to many (most?) currently circulating strains of HIV. In the second baby it was a heterozygous edit -- meaning one copy of the wild type gene was still present -- this kid would NOT be immune to HIV/AIDS but might progress to it slowly depending on the strain of infection.

      So basically in one of the babies, according to the data he presented, he may have succeeded in inducing resistance against many of the common currently circulating strains (as of 2019).

      By the way this is in technical terms not innovative .. we have been doing this in mammals (not humans for 6 years) .. the only reason we haven't done germline editing of humans in the west is because it's still considered unethical until we get more data from animal studies.

      • by Barnoid ( 263111 )

        I don't think this was about HIV resistance anyway. Removing CCR5 is known to make mice smarter and is believed to have the same effect on humans. In the context of the experiment - scientist from China - the benefit from creating smarter kids is probably much bigger than protecting them from HIV.

        See https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]

  • This just in, two mutant super babies Kaihua and Qìpao have just freed their father/creator Prof. He Jiankui from Citytown Prison!

    The genetically altered super babies were heard to exclaim, "Watch out Mojo Jinping! We're coming for you!"

    More details at 11. We now return you to your regularly scheduled cartoon.

  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @02:25PM (#59571354)

    Do it in secret.

    (You don't think this will stop anyone, do you?)

    • by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      What's the incentive? They did it to gain fame and academic recognition, you can't get them if you do it in secret.

    • That's what they did with the first human clone. She's a 22 year old South Korean college student studying music theory now. She doesn't even know she's an experiment yet and won't. Data collected from her life will not be published until 2067.

  • he is regarded by the Chinese government in the same way that Chinese hackers going after the west are.
  • Not strong enough (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sentiblue ( 3535839 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @05:33PM (#59571868)
    These guys deserve every bit of their sentences but the sentences are not severe enough. I mean how do you know the babies are immune to HIV unless you expose them to the virus? And after you do, what if the modification didn't work? You would have deliberately sentenced a baby to death because a few dumb so called "scientists" decided to play God.
    • Uh, they know that disabling a certain gene, CCR5, enables immunity to many strains of HIV. This has been found out by looking at what genes people who were exposed to HIV accidentally or by their partners had. Now I am not going to explain multiple semesters of biology to you. Anyway, the point is that it doesn't need to be tested any more than you need to test if your cars airbags work.

      • You know they test car airbags with crash tests, right? They really do test those. It's done on a model-by-model basis, but sentiblue is actually a bit correct. They still need to test if the genetic editing to disable CCR5 actually took before they can certify that the edit can work on future generations of children.

        • DNA sequencing will show if the gene is edited. It doesn't need to be tested really, there are hundreds of thousands of people with mutated/disabled CCR5 genes who we know are resistant to HIV. Plus, we understand the mechanism (the CCR5 gene provides the only entry gate for certain strains of HIV to get into cells).
          When enough people have the edit, if it fails we'll know. I mean, some out of certain number of people will encounter the virus accidentally .. its pure statistical chance. That is, we can tell

          • On NPR they said two things of note.

            1. They don't know that CRISPRing this won't screw up similar but unrelated sequences elsewhere, and the effect.

            2. When asked if jail was a harsh penalty, the western woman said kind of but not really, as many western countries would similarly put these guys in jail.

            The latter seemed disturbing to me, given the potential upside for millions should outweigh a chance of downside for a few dozen.

          • Then you test via sequencing at a minimum. And apparently the edit didn't work anyway?

    • These "dumb scientists playing God" are trying to eliminate a disease that affects millions of people, especially in poor areas. "Playing God" is something we've done since we first took sticks that lightning set on fire and used them to cook our meats. It's not a valid argument against doing research.

      There are ethical constraints on how and why research can be done and this scientist violated them. That doesn't mean all research of this nature is bad or even that our current set of ethical constraints i
  • by Swave An deBwoner ( 907414 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @06:55PM (#59572036)
    The gene modification apparently failed to create the variant that is protective against HIV (as described in an article linked to in a previous slashdot post):

    https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/12/04/2219204/china-gene-edited-baby-experiment-may-have-created-unintended-mutations [slashdot.org]
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/04/china-gene-edited-baby-experiment-may-have-created-unintended-mutations [theguardian.com]

    Fyodor Urnov, a genome-editing scientist at the University of California, Berkeley told the MIT Technology Review: “The claim they have reproduced the prevalent CCR5 variant is a blatant misrepresentation of the actual data and can only be described by one term: a deliberate falsehood.

    “The study shows that the research team instead failed to reproduce the prevalent CCR5 variant.”

    So nobody really knows what the effect of all this will be on the children who were subjected to the experiment. While the team targeted the right gene, they did not replicate the “Delta 32” variation required, instead creating novel edits whose effects are not clear.

  • He was trying to create super-intelligent humans:

    https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]

    HIV-resistance doesn't make any sense as a target for the risks this guy took. It provides plausible deniability, though.

    Five bucks says he gets to serve most of his sentence on work-release at a military lab.

    • Yeah that was my first thought. The Chicoms will put him to work just the same was the US handled Von Braun.

    • Really? Then why did they go out of their way to show up at a conference and announce anything at all? We still don't even know the real names or info of the people who were edited. Your assertion makes no sense whatsoever.

  • I mean, come on here, could it be any closer to a comic? Gene editing, then put on hold because it is corrupt, so they are the only ones. Next we will find the Chinese government will secretly continue his work, just out of the public eye.
  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Monday December 30, 2019 @11:08PM (#59572546)
    Fifty years from now there will be laws requiring you to "get your genetics done". Clean genes = clean body & clean mind.

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