During the morning of today, at in Hong Kong the expected intervention He Jiankui at the 2nd International Summit on Publishing of the human genome took place. The geneticist, who during these days revolutionized the world with the announcement of the birth of two genetically modified twins, has shown himself proud of his work and announced that another pregnancy possible from an embryo under the same conditions It was in its infancy.

Healthy Babies?

Faced with the amazement of 700 people who attended the summit, he explained that the girls were born healthy and normal and that will monitor your health very closely for the next eighteen years.

He claims that babies are healthy and that the research, funded by himself, was not done in secret.

He also said that in total eight couples with healthy parents and HIV-positive mothers, participated in his clinical trial, even though one of Between them decided to leave permanently .

As for the tumult over the past few days, he acknowledged that his experiments had been funded by himself without the participation of the university, but dismissed all charges against him. To begin with, denies having worked in secret because he claims to have involved the scientific community in the last three years. In addition, he added that the study had been sent to a newspaper for examination but that the procedure of acceptance or refusal had been paralyzed in the face of the protests that had taken place.

Apologize only for the fact that the results were disclosed in advance and explains that, for this reason, given the situation created, l & # Clinical trial was stopped by the moment. But pregnancies are not paralyzed. If what he says is true, another genetically modified baby could be born in a few months. At least if everything is true, because even in the intervention of today, he has not demonstrated that he had actually used the genetic verification techniques that he had. he rocks. To prove it, he was invited to publish his work in bioRxiv a reference in free access in which the whole of the scientific community would have access to it, until . to the newspaper to which he would have sent him an answer.

For now, as it was published yesterday, the National Health Commission of China opened an investigation to clarify what is happening. Actually. On the other hand, more than a hundred scientists from the same country wrote an open letter condemning He 's actions and expressing their dissatisfaction with the effects they may have on the reputation and the development of the biomedical community Chinese . What seems clear is that all this is just beginning and that there is still a lot of data to disclose. Let's hope that if everything is confirmed, there is still time to close Pandora's box.

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