Chinese scientist in gene case gets 3 years in prison
The Chinese researcher who stunned and alarmed the international scientific community with the announcement that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies has been sentenced to three years in prison by a court in China.
He Jiankui sparked a bioethical crisis last year when he claimed to have edited the DNA of human embryos, resulting in the birth of twins called Lulu and Nana as well as a possible third pregnancy. The announcement, which was aimed at making the children immune to HIV, was excoriated by many scientists as a reckless experiment on human subjects that violated basic ethical principles.
On Monday, he was convicted of “illegal medical practice,” sentenced to three years in prison and fined about $430,000, according to the news agency Xinhua. Two collaborators, Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou, were also convicted and received prison sentences and fines.
The court found the three were not qualified to work as doctors and violated regulations with experiments that were “in the pursuit of personal fame and gain” and “disrupted medical order.”
Scientists have been testing an array of powerful biotechnology tools to fix genetic diseases in adults, but they have long drawn a clear moral line between curing genetic diseases in adults and editing and implanting human embryos, since those changes and any unanticipated ones could be inherited by future generations — in essence altering the human species.
He’s experiment was also criticized because it appeared to have failed to meet basic ethical principles intended to protect human subjects who participate in research. Even scientists who maintain that gene editing may one day be safely used to create babies noted that because of the safe ways to prevent the transmission of HIV, there is no reason to edit the genomes of healthy babies.
He, a former associate professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology, has been under investigation in China. Several international scientific bodies, including the World Health Organization, have been meeting over the past year to create standards and a framework for oversight of the fast-moving science. Several U.S. universities have also looked into whether scientists who knew about He’s experiment were involved.
Stanford University cleared its scientists, including He’s former academic adviser, Stephen Quake, finding that Quake and others did not participate in the research and had expressed “serious concerns to Dr. He.”
Rice University has been investigating bioengineering professor Michael Deem, who was listed as a co-author on a paper submitted to scientific journals reporting on the experiment, according to Technology Review.