After his invention of the first genetically engineered babies, Chinese scientist He Jianku has gone missing. He has not been seen since his last public stunt at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing.
He Jianku was criticized for testing an unsupervised experiment without being 100% sure about the risks of his experiment or the outcome. No one knew where he got the two poor twins --his test subjects. He claims to have gotten rid of the possibility of them being afflicted with AIDS by alternating the human embryos with the CRISPR gene-editing system.
The experiment was done in secret and had no pre-testing to confirm the procedure’s safety for both the mother and the twins. The Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen acknowledges He’s work has “seriously violated academic and ethics standards”. So far, the university’s president, Chen Shiyi, dismisses He’s disappearance, instead upholding He remains under house arrest on campus. “Right now nobody’s information is accurate, only the official channels are,” explained a spokeswoman for the university. She continued, “We cannot answer any questions regarding the matter right now, but if we have any information, we will update it through our official channels.”
The Chinese government, represented by Xy Nanping, China’s Vice Minister of science and technology, also condemned He and his experiments by saying that He’s work “crossed the line of morality and ethics adhered to by the academic community and was shocking and unacceptable,”.
The Chinese government also updated on Thursday that they banned the editing experiments -- probably for the better.
More to come on weird genetic mutations, including an “Alien” named Ata with an intriguing past in next month’s chapter!