China investigates the legality of genetic modification in babies against AIDS



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Beijing, November 27 (Prensa Latina) A team from the China National Health Commission is investigating the legality of a controversial experiment in which two genetically modified babies were born to make them resistant to HIV-AIDS in the southern province of Guangdong.

The research is being conducted at the University of Science and Technology and at HarMoniCare Maternal and Infant Hospital of Shenzhen City, to verify if, in these places, the test was actually conducted with the authorization of the respective authorities.

The commission ordered after the controversy that erupted over the past few hours inside and outside the country after experiencing the experience that led the Chinese scientist He Jiankui and his team.

Yesterday, a video on YouTube explained that the Lulu and Nana twins were born in perfect health several weeks ago, after using a technique called Crispr-Cas9 to mutate a gene and make it resistant to the virus that causes AIDS.

This procedure is also called "genetic scissors" and allows you to delete and replace unwanted parts of the genome in the same way that a bug in a computer is fixed.

According to him, babies are born by in vitro fertilization of a modified embryo before being implanted in the mother's uterus.

"Just after injecting the husband's sperm into the egg, an embryologist injected a Crispr-Cas9 protein to modify a gene to protect the girls from future HIV infection," he said. -he explains.

However, this fact has alarmed the public and the scientific community because it violates ethical issues, as it is shown that this type of change is inherited by other generations.

He Jiankui disclosed it before presenting it formally and in detail at a world genome expert conference in Hong Kong, but after the criticism is isolated and it is unclear whether it will intervene in the nomination.

Even the hospital and the university where the experiment would have been developed would have been separated from the event.

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