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Science

Scientist Who Gene-edited Babies Back in Lab and 'Proud' of Past Work Despite Jailing 33

A Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for his role in creating the world's first genetically edited babies says he has returned to his laboratory to work on the treatment of Alzheimer's and other genetic diseases. From a report: In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, He Jiankui said he had resumed research on human embryo genome editing, despite the controversy over the ethics of artificially rewriting genes, which some critics predicted would lead to demand for "designer babies."

"We will use discarded human embryos and comply with both domestic and international rules," He told the Mainichi Shimbun, adding that he had no plans to produce more genome-edited babies. Previously, He had used a tool known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite DNA in embryos. In 2019 a court in China sentenced He to three years in prison for violating medical regulations after he claimed the previous year that he had created genetically modified twin sisters, Lulu and Nana, before birth. His experiments sent shockwaves through the medical and scientific world. He was widely condemned for having gone ahead with the risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified procedure with inadequate consent from the families involved.

The court found that He had forged documents from an ethics review panel that were used to recruit couples for his research. He said he had used a gene-editing procedure known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite the DNA in the sisters' embryos -- modifications he claimed would make the children immune to HIV. He has continued to defend his work, despite widespread criticism, saying he was "proud" of having created Lulu and Nana. A third girl was born in 2019 as a result of similar experiments.
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Scientist Who Gene-edited Babies Back in Lab and 'Proud' of Past Work Despite Jailing

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  • Right now the world seems to have a big problem with the concept of meritocracy. Imagine if we did get designer babies or people who were going to live to be 300 years old or something similar. The idea is that they actually would be genetically superior to the rest of us (probably in many dimensions). So, I wonder what would happen to them, ultimately. Would they be hunted? Would they rule over us? Would they claim minority status? Would they demand we use special words for them or would they crusade against that concept? I think it would probably depend on how big the population of "specials" was in a given generation.
    • by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday April 01, 2024 @12:48PM (#64361794) Homepage Journal

      Odds are that they would indeed "rule" over us, in the sense that we're ruled over by the rich already, and the 2nd wave of genemod babies would be for rich parents. First generation would be the experimental one, too risky.
      But then the genemods would filter down, either through the technology becoming cheaper, or the good old fashioned way.

      Plus, well, consider the gene-modding being done now: We have one insertion of HIV immunity (presumed), and a few other cases of "fixing" a nasty mutation. In short, a restoration of "normal" from "below normal". Star Trek Augments, these are not, and we currently don't have the handle on the genetics to determine what edits to make to make somebody smarter, faster, stronger, etc... Longer lived only via things like knocking dangerous mutations out - HIV immunity, cancer, various lung and metabolic problems, etc...

    • Do the best and brightest rule over us now? Has the genius class been swept into office while I wasn't looking? Sarcasm aside, it might be nice to be able to improve the intelligence of the political and wealthy classes. At least that way they would be a bit smarter about the wholesale corruption. Of course it might be that people above a certain threshold of intelligence are unwilling to be politicians and CEO's due to the high levels of cognitive dissonance required. That would be a good way of limiting p
    • There are multiple ways to define superiority. There is no such thing as free lunch. For each kind of improvement that is traditionally associated with becoming "superior" beings there definitely will be drawbacks, like some gene trait would come at cost of loss in some other area, for example some genetic disease or just inferiority in some other abilities. Also, people DO evolve even without gene-editing. So I don't see much conceptual difference between naturally evolved phenotypes and gene-edited ones.
    • Gattaca's sitll far, far away. Many of the traits people would care about aren't known to be determined by any single gene.
      You could choose a kid with blue eyes and make sure she doesn't have cystic fibrosis, but most things are more complex than that.

    • I think gene-edited babies of the ultra-rich would be just as useless as they are now.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There is a more fundamental question which is how do we treat both people with exceptional genetics and those with "average" ones?

      For the most part exceptional genetics are seen as a gift that should be rewarded. Nobody is suggesting requiring very tall basketball players to take growth stunting hormones, even though it means that average height players are at a great disadvantage for not winning that particular genetic lottery. On the other hand, there are those who object to athletes with intersex charact

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday April 01, 2024 @12:37PM (#64361740)

    If we're careful, and maybe wait until we've learned a bit more, we SHOULD be altering the human genome in heritable ways.

    The effect of not doing it when we could do it is that we're responsible for the negative effects of health conditions in any person we could have modded to prevent them.

    • And there's plenty of things to "fix" before we start trying to improve on the baseline human.

      For example, the breast cancer gene. The various gene-mod treatments for genetic conditions that don't affect the gene-line, IE it isn't inheritable.

      • by Targon ( 17348 )
        There are still a lot of questions about HOW these genes work. What about it causes the cancer, or is it just that combined with other things, cancer is more likely? That is what makes a lot of this stuff questionable, sure, it might do good things, but then make the individual psychotic at the same time. The thing then is, can you find a way to do the good things without the psychotic effect coming into play? On the other hand, if the source of a disease is known, using gene editing to eliminate th
        • Which genes are you talking about? The breast cancer gene, while we might not understand the role exactly, we have examples of cancer causing and non-cancer causing genes. The editing would be to transform the prior into the latter. Same deal with quite a few other "easy fixes", where we know that particular genes are "broken" and what the break is, and the normal expression is pretty much universally better.

          So the gene editing I was suggesting was the latter type you mentioned - the problem and fix are

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      I understand where you're coming from, but it's nonsense. Fire is a useful tool; it prepares food for consumption and keeps us warm when cold could hurt us. If used carelessly, it can cause massive injury.

      Gene editing is also a tool. Used correctly it can do great things, used incorrectly and it can be horrific.

      Here's a good example: should we conduct germline editing to remove other skin colors? Make everyone white? Who gets to decide what genomic changes are the "right" ones? Some, like musc

  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Monday April 01, 2024 @12:38PM (#64361750)

    Were there any genetic tests done to see if he actually did anything but plain IVF? I have my doubts.

    • Well, he claims he did the tests in what he published. I'm not sure if a third party did it, BUT .. gene editing any animal's embryo is straightforward and simple. It's not rocket science -- at all. To do it on a human embryo only requires will, and nothing else (ok some basic lab equipment like a micro-injector etc) -- but no scientific genius or breakthrough is needed. The procedure is simple to the point where he'd be a fool to claim he did it but didn't actually do it -- it's also extremely easy to dis

  • We will use discarded human embryos and comply with both domestic and international rules

    Do the parents of these "discarded embryos" know that their embryos are going to this Dr. Moreau wannabe? I mean do they actually know or is it shrouded in legalese and buried in the middle of page 47 of the Terms of Service?

  • In his official statement, he said "Fools, I'll destroy them all!"

  • ... of gene-edited babies and Slashdot editors.

    • Everyone has multiple twins, at least one Rust acolyte, and is constantly showing up late? BeauHD will finally have an audience!
  • I believe we're still at the "don't know enough about the downstream effects of hand-editing the gene pool" and the potential for disaster, that being the reason to eep a lid on it.
    We know genes jump; I don't think we know enough about when and how.
    We could quickly go from, "let's make a few changes and see if that's better" to, "every embryo will need to have these previous mistakes edited out if we're to survive."

  • Apparently he was proud of his work too.
  • Yeah, and Sam Bankman-Fried is proud of his gamble too.

  • We should be editing out every known negative genetic defect and giving everyone a suite of better SNPs. Every advantage and prevention of suffering that can be given should be given. 80's and 90's mythology of the "designer baby for the rich" is fear-mongering and standing in they way of progress.
  • If it is used to eliminate disease then thats great.

    So called “designer babies” is a different matter but eliminating downs or asthma, who the hell wouldn’t want that for a child?

    • Well, just have to point out that eliminating downs might be hard - it's mostly caused by an extra 21st chromosome. So you aren't inheriting downs, it's an active replication error. Though apparently genetic translocation is also possible, and that can be inherited. So fix that...

      Asthma, well, that's getting into the immune system, which we don't have a great hold on what causes asthma. We can probably eliminate most of it by cleaning up the air anyways. EVs, for example, are already dropping cases of

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