From Gene-Edited Embryos to Covid: China Faces Regulatory and Ethical Challenges

In early April, He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who used gene-editing technology on human embryos born in 2018, was released from his three-year prison sentence, imposed after a Shenzhen District Court convicted him of “illegal medical practice.” He and two accomplices were banned from conducting any work related to assisted reproductive technology, applying for administrative permits for research on human genetic resources, and from applying for research funds.

The He Jiankui affair and, little more than a year later, the Covid pandemic have focused attention in China on ethical governance of research and medical  practice. Over the last two years, China has updated some regulations on human genetic engineering and assisted reproduction and established a national committee to guide and supervise bioethics nationwide. But there are legal gaps in some of the regulations and tension between competing values: the desire to encourage new research and to potentially inhibit it by imposing stricter ethics regulations.

An example of this tension came out in public expression over He Jiankui. Ever since his arrest there have been occasional comments on Chinese social media...