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"All of us that are here at this conference are struggling to figure out what was done and also whether the process was done properly. Doudna helped discover CRISPR and organize the summit.
"This work is a break from the cautious and transparent approach of the global scientific community's application of CRISPR-Cas9 for human germline editing," Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview. The claims by He sparked immediate widespread criticism from attendees at the summit and elsewhere. The summit was organized try to reach a global consensus on whether and how it would be ethical to create genetically modified human beings with CRISPR. He, the statement says, has been on unpaid leave from the university.Ĭhurch and He are among hundreds of scientists gathering at the Second International Summit on Human Gene Editing in Hong Kong. The university where He worked issued a statement that officials were "deeply shocked" by the experiment, which it stressed was conducted elsewhere. Meanwhile, He is now facing investigation by a local medical ethics board to see whether his experiment broke Chinese laws or regulations. "Both anecdotal - yet healthy baby girls can have an impact," Church wrote. "This event might be analogous to Louise Brown in 1978," wrote George Church, a prominent Harvard geneticist, in an email. The children's father is HIV-positive.īecause the research has not yet been published in a scientific journal or carefully vetted by other scientists, many researchers and bioethicists remain cautious about the claim.īut, if true, many said the move would be historic, comparing it to the birth of Louise Brown, the first baby created through in-vitro fertilization, IVF. He says his team performed "gene surgery" on embryos created from their parents' sperm and eggs to protect the children from the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, which causes AIDS. "The babies are home now with their mom Grace and their dad Mark." "Two beautiful little Chinese girls name Lulu and Nana came crying into the world as healthy as any other babies a few weeks ago," He says in a video posted online. The scientist, He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, says he used human embryos modified with the gene-editing technique CRISPR to create twin girls. to add information about an ethics committee investigation into the DNA-editing experiment.įor the first time, a scientist claims to have used a powerful new gene-editing technique to create genetically modified human babies.
Critics say the experiment was premature.Įditor's note: This story was updated at 11:52 a.m. Genetics researcher He Jiankui said his lab considered ethical issues before deciding to proceed with DNA editing of human embryos to create twin girls with a modification to reduce their risk of HIV infection.