Chinese scientist who allegedly created the first genetically engineered babies is being detained

The Chinese scientist who shocked the world with claims of creating the first genetically engineered babies is being detained in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to a report in The New York Times. 

He Jiankui, a Chinese research scientist at the Southern University of Science and Technology and an entrepreneur involved in two Chinese biotech startups, made headlines and generated controversy when he announced he had used CRISPR to remove a gene which plays a role in enabling forms of the HIV virus to infect cells from the embryos of two twin girls born in November.

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The international scientific community almost immediately condemned He for using the technology on human embryos and the Chinese government shut down He’s research almost immediately, according to The New York Times. 

Now it appears that the government has also put He and his family under a form of house arrest.

He is apparently under the supervision of armed guards and is staying at a housing facility on the campus of the university where he performed his research that’s typically reserved for visiting professors. Hotel staff and Liu Chaoyu, the co-founder alongside Dr. He of a genomics startup, Vienomics, confirmed the identity of the professor whose whereabouts had been unknown since a public appearance in late November where Dr. He defended his use of the CRISPR gene-editing technology. According to the Times report, Dr. He is allowed to make phone calls and send emails. Executives at Vienomics have spoken to the scientist about company matters but could not confirm his whereabouts when questioned by reporters from the Times. The Southern University of Science and Technology, based in Shenzhen, has denied the reporting around Dr. He’s whereabouts and fate, telling the Times, “Right now nobody’s information is accurate, only the official channels are.” Meanwhile, the official channels are staying silent. Reporters found security personnel blocking access to the residence where Dr. He is reportedly staying and others denying access to the former offices Dr. He used to conduct his research. The scientist’s name and biography remains on a board listing staff in the university’s biology department.

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He first announced the results of his experiments at the 2nd International Summit On Human Genome Editing, a Summit convened to determine how and under what conditions it would be acceptable to create genetically engineered children. Almost immediately after reporting his findings, He was met with condemnation. According to a report on National Public Radio, David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist (and co-chair of the conference) said, “I don’t think it has been a transparent process,” Baltimore said. “We’ve only found out about it after it’s happened and the children are born. I personally don’t think it was medically necessary… I think there has been a failure of self-regulation by the scientific community because of a lack of transparency,” he added. Another scientist who organized the conference, University of Wisconsin Bioethicist Alta Charo, said that the treatments were performed under false pretenses. “The patients were given a consent form that falsely stated this was an AIDS vaccine trial and which conflated research with therapy by claiming they were ‘likely’ to benefit,” Charo said. “In fact, there is not only very little chance these babies would be in need of a benefit, given their low risk, but there is no way to evaluate if this indeed conferred any benefit.” According to the Times report, the university had advised its staff that they were prohibited from talking to the media about Dr. He’s research.

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UPDATED: CRISPR scientist in China claims his team’s research has resulted in the world’s first gene-edited babies

Update: The story is getting even more convoluted. When contacted by TechCrunch’s Rita Liao, a representative at the hospital that supposedly approved Jiankui He’s study stated “what we can say for sure is that the gene editing process did not take place at our hospital. The babies were not born here either.” She also said that the hospital is investigating the validity of the documents connected to the study on ChiCTR. In what would represent a dramatic and ethically fraught escalation of CRISPR research, a scientist from a university in Shenzhen, China claims He has succeeded in helping create the world’s first genetically edited babies. Jiankui He told the Associated Press that twin girls were born earlier this month after He edited their embryos using CRISPR technology to remove the CCR5 gene, which plays a critical role in enabling many forms of the HIV virus to infect cells. The AP’s interview with He was published shortly after a report earlier today by the MIT Technology Review that his research team at the Southern University of Science and Technology is using CRISPR technology to edit out the CCR5 gene and create children with resistance to HIV. The Technology Review report cited documents that are up on the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry’s (ChiCTR) website (here and here). The ChiCTR is a primary registry of The World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trial Registry.

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It is important to note that there is still no independent confirmation of He’s research and that it has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. His claims are certain to cause a stir, however, at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, set to begin in Hong Kong on Tuesday. According to the Technology Review, the summit’s organizers were apparently not notified of He’s plans for the study, though the AP says He informed them today. An American scientist, Michael Deem, also told the AP he worked with He on the project in China. In his interview with the AP, He, who studied at Rice and Stanford before returning to China, said he felt “a strong responsibility that it’s not just to make a first, but also make it an example” and that “society will decide what to do next.” According to documents linked by the Technology Review, the study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Shenzhen HarMoniCare Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Its summary on the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry also said the study’s execution time is between March 7, 2017 to March 7, 2019, and that it sought married couples living in China who met its health and age requirements and are willing to undergo IVF therapy. The research team wrote that their goal is to “obtain healthy children to avoid HIV providing new insights for the future elimination of major genetic diseases in early human embryos.” A table attached to the trial’s listing on the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry said genetic tests have already been carried out on fetuses of 12, 19 and 24 weeks gestational age, though it is unclear if those pregnancies include the one that resulted in the birth of the twin girls, whose parents wish to remain anonymous. “I believe this is going to help the families and their children,” He told the AP, adding that if the study caused harm, “I would feel the same pain as they do and it’s going to be my own responsibility.” In 2015, Chinese scientists at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou first edited the genes of a human embryo using CRISPR technology (the acronym stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), which enables the removal of specific genes by acting as a very precise pair of “genetic scissors.” Though other scientists, including in the United States, have conducted similar research since then, the Southern University of Science and Technology’s study would be considered especially radical if it indeed has come to fruition. Many scientists and ethicists are concerned about CRISPR technology being abused to perpetuate eugenics or create “designer babies” if used on embryos meant to be carried to term.

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As in the United States and many European countries, using a genetically engineered embryo in a pregnancy is already prohibited in China, though the Technology Review points out that this guideline, which was issued to IVF clinics in 2003, may not carry the weight of the law. In 2015, shortly after the Sun Yat-sen University experiment (which was conducted on embryos that were unviable because of chromosomal effects) became known, a meeting called by several groups, including the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the Institute of Medicine, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London, called for a moratorium on making inheritable changes to the human genome. In addition to ethical concerns, Fyodor Urnov, a gene-editing scientist and associate director of the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences, a nonprofit in Seattle, told the Technology Review that He’s study is cause for “regret and concern” because it may also overshadow progress in gene-editing research currently being carried out on adults with HIV.