Chinese scientist claims to use Crispr to make his first genetically modified babies

At the conference, whose organizers included Jennifer Doudna, one of the inventors of Crispr technology, Dr. He gave an in-depth lecture on a topic that her colleagues considered to be in the field of research approved by point of view of ethics, said one of the participants, Dr. Fyodor. Urnov, Deputy Director of the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences and Visiting Scholar at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California at Berkeley.

"If you listen to his speech, it's a very cautious, thoughtful and progressive progress," said Dr. Urnov. "He introduced the montage of CCR₅ embryos. He presented the discussion to peers, professional gene writers who knew the field was evolving rapidly. Frankly, the atmosphere in the room was, I do not mean damn it, but it was "Yeah, sure, you" We built ten years of progress ".

But he did not mention that some of these embryos had been implanted in a woman and could give birth to genetically modified babies.

"What we know now is that while he was speaking, there was a woman in China carrying twins," said Dr. Urnov. "He had the opportunity to say," Oh, by the way, I'm just going to say, people, there's a woman with twins. "

"I would never play poker against Dr. He," joked Dr. Urnov.

Richard Hynes, cancer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-led an advisory group on human gene editing for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, said that this group and a similar organization in Britain had determined that human genes needed to be modified, the procedure should be used only to "meet the important needs for medical treatment, it should be well monitored, it should be well followed and the full consent should be put in place.

It's not clear why modifying genes to make people resistant to H.I.V. is "a serious need not satisfied". Men with H.I.V. do not infect embryos. Their sperm contains the virus that causes AIDS, which can infect women, but the virus can be washed sperm before insemination. Or a doctor can inject a single sperm into an egg. In both cases, the woman will not be infected, any more than the babies.