How a Chinese scientist broke the rules to create the first gene edited babies

Two sisters entered the world prematurely one night from October last year by emergency cesarean section. The Chinese hospital staff swaddled them in white and placed them in incubators.

The twins had a secret that almost nobody in the hospital knew. A man who knew it was there was waiting – a US-trained researcher, Dr. He Jiankui, who had gone to town to see them.

The…