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Spanish scientists have warned that the announcement that genetically engineered babies had been obtained was not published in any scientific journal and so had not been evaluated either; "You can not play to be a god that way," said José Alcamí, of the Carlos III Health Institute.
"This subject – referring to the Chinese researcher who is leading the investigation on He Jiankui – is a criminal," he told Efe Alcamí, who said the announcement could "do a lot of harm to science".
Interested by you: Chinese scientists say they have two genetically modified twins
The Hen team claimed to have created the world's two genetically modified twin babies using the CRISPR / Cas9 technique to make them resistant to diseases such as HIV.
Alcamí pointed out that this announcement "will generate a kind of warning against scientists who are working well" with this "wonderful" technique: this gentleman, who makes a comparison ", attacked a bank and now they will treat us all as if we were thieves ".
Ethical codes
And it is that, according to the scientist, it seems that the team of Chinese researchers has jumped all codes of ethics: no one knows how the experiment was done – the University of Shenzhen in which they work n ' There is no record of the study – and if it is confirmed that a manipulation of human embryos has been performed, this will generate a move against.
For Alcamí, the CRISPR technique "is fascinating and the people who use it know that we can modify the genome and modify cells in culture or even mice – always with the appropriate permissions that each research project must respect.
"But we also know that it can introduce mutations out of the specific domain, so the system is not validated for use with humans."
"It is not excluded that these girls have mutations introduced into other genes that are not seen now but that could pose a problem for them in the future," said the scientist, who said stated that this technique was still somewhat unpredictable.
The Chinese team has based its experiments on the "deactivation" of the CCR5 gene, which HIV uses as a bridge of the immune system, but, according to Alcamí, the deactivation of this gene would also have consequences by facilitating other infections by viruses. such as fever. West Nile.
"We can not play to be gods in this way," lamented Alcamí, who recalled that everything related to the use of this technique is already well controlled by ethics committees and governed by the law of biomedical research.
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