Scientist Jailed for Gene Hacking Babies Says Ethics Are Holding Back Progress
By Luis Prada,
Vice
| 03. 14. 2025
public domain photo by Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons
Back in 2019, Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui proudly announced to the world that he had created two genetically edited human babies, fully expecting a round of applause and three cheers of “Hip Hip Hooray.” Instead, everyone booed him and he got thrown in prison for three years.
He’s since been released from prison, though it doesn’t seem like he’s learned any lessons from his stint in the clink. This was demonstrated by a post on Twitter/X wherein he accompanied a soulless picture of himself in a tweet in which he says that “ethics is holding back scientific innovation and progress.”
Now, you might recognize that is the kind of thing a villain says before he splices into your DNA, unforeseen consequences be damned. Jiankui used CRISPR gene-editing technology to edit the DNA of a set of twins codenamed “Nana” and “Lulu” to make them immune to HIV. Sounds like a noble goal, until you find out that fiddling with those genes to make the girls immune to HIV could...
Related Articles
Gray wolf by Jessica Eirich via Unsplash
“I’m not a scarcity guy, I’m an abundance guy”
– Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm, The New Yorker, 4/14/25
Even the most casual consumers of news will have seen the run of recent headlines featuring the company Colossal Biosciences. On March 4, they announced with great fanfare the world’s first-ever woolly mice, as a first step toward creating a woolly mammoth. Then they topped that on April 7 by unveiling one...
By Katrina Northrop, The Washington Post | 04.06.2025
photo via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 3.0
China's most infamous scientist is attempting a comeback. He Jiankui, who went to jail for three years after claiming he had created the world's first genetically altered babies, says he remains...
By Kevin Davies, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 03.27.2025
Around 2018–19, there was not a bigger science and ethical story than the debate over heritable human genome editing (HHGE) and the scandal over the “CRISPR babies.” The scientist, He Jiankui, who attempted to engineer the germline of human embryos...
By Megan Molteni, Stat | 03.28.2025
WASHINGTON — Keith Joung knows better than a lot of people what, exactly, it might require to prove to regulators and patients that CRISPR could be safely used to alter the genome of a human embryo. If, of course, society...