Gene editing scientist gets 3 years in prison

— A court in China on BEIJING Monday sentenced He Jiankui, the researcher who shocked the global scientific community when he claimed that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies, to three years in prison for carrying out “illegal medical practices.”

In a surprise announcement from a trial that was closed to the public, the court in the southern city of Shenzhen found He guilty of forging approval documents from ethics review boards to recruit couples in which the man had HIV and the woman did not, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported. He had said he was trying to prevent HIV infections in newborns, but the state media Monday said he deceived the subjects and the medical authorities alike.

He, 35, sent the scientific world into an uproar last year when he announced at a conference in Hong Kong that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies — twin girls. On Monday, China’s state media said his work had resulted in a third genetically edited baby, who had been previously undisclosed.

He pleaded guilty and was also fined $430,000. The court also handed down prison sentences to two other scientists who it said had “conspired” with him: Zhang Renli, who was sentenced to two years in prison, and Qin Jinzhou, who got a suspended sentence of 1 1/2 years.

The court held that the defendants, “in the pursuit of fame and profit, deliberately violated the relevant national regulations on scientific and medical research and crossed the bottom line on scientific and medical ethics.”