Claim of CRISPR’d baby girls stuns genome editing summit
By Sharon Begley,
STAT
| 11. 26. 2018
HONG KONG — A Chinese scientist’s claim that he used the genome editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the DNA of human embryos, resulting in the birth a few weeks ago of twin girls, stunned organizers of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, leaving them scrambling to evaluate the claim two days before the scientist is scheduled to speak at the meeting.
“I don’t know the details” of the claim by He Jiankui, said David Baltimore of the California Institute of Technology, chairman of the organizing committee of the summit, which begins on Tuesday in Hong Kong. “We don’t know what will be said” when He speaks at a session on human embryo editing.
The summit’s organizing committee issued a statement Monday saying they had only just learned of He’s research in Shenzhen, China. “Whether the clinical protocols that resulted in the births in China conformed with the guidance” of leading scientific bodies for conducting clinical trials of heritable genome editing “remains to be determined,” the statement said. “We hope that the dialogue at our summit further advances the...
Related Articles
By Vuyile Madwantsi, Independent Online | 08.22.2025
Imagine this: a future where parents could choose their baby’s eye colour, height or even intelligence.
Sounds like science fiction, right? But it’s closer than you think.
Let’s start with a simple, human truth: most of us want healthy children...
By Dennis Sponer, BioSpace | 09.03.2025
Imagine telling a child with sickle cell disease that a cure exists—but it’s too expensive for their insurer to cover. That’s not a hypothetical. It’s the reality of gene therapy today: a revolutionary medical breakthrough caught in the bottleneck of...
By Tia Ghose, Live Science | 09.16.2025
Twenty-six years ago today, on Sept. 17, a teenager who had received an experimental gene therapy died. His death led to needed changes in the clinical trial process while also spurring skepticism that would ultimately stall the field of gene...
By Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times | 08.25.2025
Scientists have dreamed for centuries about using animal organs to treat ailing humans. In recent years, those efforts have begun to bear fruit: Researchers have begun transplanting the hearts and kidneys of genetically modified pigs into patients, with varying degrees...