
The Chinese scientist who allegedly created CRISPR babies is being detained - neom
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/29/chinese-scientist-who-allegedly-created-the-first-genetically-engineered-babies-is-being-detained/
======
dmix
Dr He chose a bad time to skirt scientific ethics, regardless if there was any
direct harm to the people, as China recently announced measures to punish
scientific misconduct [1].

They will likely make an example of him since he's such a public figure now.
Whether they can really change the culture there is to be seen, but one thing
China knows how to do is add layers of administration to select areas.

Ever since CRISPR was announced people have always been scared of what "rouge"
actors _could_ be do, now that this technology it's so 'democratized'. It was
probably bound to happen somewhere. So they'll be interested in clamping down
hard on the early minor cases of ethical violations, in order to protect
against other much more deliberately malicious future cases.

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07740-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07740-z)

~~~
tiglionabbit
> "rouge"

You mean rogue?

~~~
GordonS
It's a play on "red"; the Dr is Chinese.

~~~
toyg
(For grammar-challenged people who might take dry humour as serious: above
comment is clearly a joke. “Rouge” is the French word for “red”, but it’s a
common misspelling for the English word “rogue”. It’s pretty clear the top
post in thread is a misspelling, not a pun.)

~~~
GordonS
Eh? I wasn't joking, and I've never seen "rogue" mis-spelled as "rouge".

The top post even put it in double quotes, e.g. "rouge". That makes it pretty
clear it's a pun, in this case playing on rogue and red - and it works all the
better because of the recent 'red danger', anti-Chinese sentiment that the
powers that be are currently stirring up.

~~~
toyg
If you’ve never seen rouge as misspelling of rogue, you haven’t read enough
intertubes. Beyond that, I guess we won’t know until drmix intervenes -
although now he’d say “of course!” it was voluntary ;)

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olalonde
Pardon my ignorance but why is it unethical to use CRISPR on human embryos? Is
it a question of the technology being still too immature or the more
philosophical question of whether it should be used at all? Something else?

~~~
dyu
It's like editing a piece of code without fully understanding what it does,
without unit tests, and your text editor may be buggy.

~~~
dis-sys
> It's like editing a piece of code without fully understanding what it does,
> without unit tests, and your text editor may be buggy.

No, it is far worse than what you described. your described buggy code can
cause damages but you have the choice to delete them all to stop any further
damages.

There is no such option for experiments done on humans.

~~~
webmaven
_> There is no such option for experiments done on humans._

There are, unfortunately, options for deleting humans with "buggy code", the
real problems surround the fact that it is other - probably "buggy" \- humans
making the determination of which humans to mark for deletion.

------
duxup
There was some discussion that this gene isn't just related to HIV immunity
but also related to memory and this may have been a different kind of
experiment than was presented.

~~~
buboard
There are two studies indicating that CCR5 suppression improves fear/context
memory in mice. There is also HIV-related dementia in humans. However, i dont
think anyoen has studied significant memory effects in humans with a naturally
defunct CCR5 gene. It is a stretch to extrapolate the mice results in humans,
and He did not say that this was one of the goals of his study. His goal was
to prevent HIV infection.

[https://elifesciences.org/articles/20985](https://elifesciences.org/articles/20985)

~~~
duxup
I don't know about his possibility of success or even learning anything, but
just it being a remote possibility to me doesn't rule out the possibility that
he was looking to see if he could impact memory.

I suspect any human enhancement type work will be highly experimental the
first few (or more) rounds.

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alexandercrohde
I'm noticing an interesting phenomenon on this topic. People are saying they
an objection X, but upon inspection, it becomes clear that the actual fear has
nothing to do with X.

For example the objection "this isn't a useful mutation," may be true, but it
wouldn't justify outrage. It's the absence of a positive rather than the
presence of a negative.

Or, for example, "the parents weren't informed properly," if true, might
justify better communication with parents in the future but shouldn't slow
down such genetic mutations on a wide-scale with informed consent. I imagine
there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people willing to give informed
consent.

I imagine it's something much more general like fear of the unknown, which is
reasonable. But we should strive to be authentic in our arguments.

~~~
marchenko
The stated objections make sense if you consider that they include an unstated
risk component: _e.g._ "This isn't a useful mutation [given that its downside
effects predispose carriers to more severe flu and West Nile + risks inherent
in the technique itself]", or "the parents weren't informed properly [and will
have to live with the guilt/shame that their ignorance may have caused serious
harm to their progeny for generations]" There are even network/ecosystem
risks: if governments get the idea that CRISPR's practical potential is
trivial, or if potential participants can't trust practitioners, the entire
field could suffer setbacks.

------
winrid
Crazy! Feel bad for the babies... Who knows if the Chinese government will
even let them reproduce if they survive :/

~~~
PakG1
How would that be enforced though? Forced abortions at any hospital because
their IDs are on a national blacklist? What if they could just give at birth
at home? And going overseas to give birth would obviously rear its head as an
option at that point. Genie's out of the bottle, and everyone's trying to
close it back up for now (which in my mind is the right decision; we have
medical trials for new drugs and procedures for a good reason).

~~~
balls187
Forced sterilization.

------
rjf72
I think it's somewhat interesting to consider this issue while thinking about
the history of medical developments. Many things we now take for granted are
the result of extremely unethical scientific work that often involved literal
torture.

For instance in World War 2 Japan operated Unit 731 [1]. This unit was
basically war crimes incarnate. That page has plenty of sordid details so
there's no need to repeat them here. But the most interesting thing is that
rather than being punished for some of the most heinous crimes committed
against other humans, the scientists were secretly given immunity by the US in
exchange for the data they gained through human experimentation. Victim
accounts were then publicly dismissed as communist propaganda.

We did something similar with Germany and the Nazis. Operation Paperclip [2]
involved the US recruiting some 1,600 scientists, engineers, and technicians
that were involved in weapons development for the Nazis. Interestingly enough
one man, Werner von Braun would go on to become the chief architect of the
Saturn V launch vehicle that sent us to the moon. It led to an amusing
satirical quote, "I aim at the stars, but sometimes I hit London." Granted
weapons tech development is hardly in the same realm as human experimentation
(even if the former is responsible for far more death than the latter), but
it's kind of interesting that the people who created the weapon systems were
immensely rewarded while nameless recruits who played no particularly unique
or meaningful role were castigated as the irredeemables.

The point of this is that whichever nation, group, or individual achieves
progress on positive and clearly productive human genetic modification will
likely receive immense accolades and support, even if in secret, regardless of
what our public stance on the behavior may be. It's interesting to consider
the somewhat bizarre system of motivations and consequences/rewards that we
create in the pursuit of the _appearance_ of morality.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip)

------
qwerty456127
He is my hero! I want my future children genes augmented!

~~~
vricius
You must read the book "The Revolutionary Phenotype: The amazing story of how
life begins and how it ends" by J.F. Gariepy, PhD.. It outlines how genetic
modification will eventually result in DNA being replaced completely with a
new system if we continue down this path.

Watch this short clip where he explains in detail what the book is about:
[https://youtu.be/mFQk7ausjd8?t=131](https://youtu.be/mFQk7ausjd8?t=131)

I do not mean to be advertising for him, I feel it's important for people to
understand that what will happen will be equivalent to RNA based lifeforms
being replaced with DNA based lifeforms...

Here is the Amazon page if anyone's interested:
[https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Phenotype-amazing-
story...](https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Phenotype-amazing-story-
begins/dp/1729861563)

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crimsonalucard
Genetic engineering is a tricky one. It seems unethical but if you think about
it.... there is nothing inherently immoral about creating a genetically
superior baby.

It's our own sense of insecurity and disgust thats inhibits this technology
from crossing the line.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for restricting this technology. I don't want to
live in a world like the one portrayed by Gattaca simply because of the fact
that my children and I will never be the ones that are genetically superior.

~~~
perfmode
The risk isn’t that we create something superior. It’s that we fail and
subject babies/children/people to suffering that we can’t predict or imagine.

Gene editing can go very wrong.

You change one little thing and it produces myriad unexpected effects.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Much of genetic engineering is a blackbox. Many macro physical traits are
associated with a gene (or several genes) through a probabilistic quantity
indicating that a lot of what we are dealing with is a blackbox where we only
establish correlations with inputs and outputs. However, I am addressing the
ethics of genetically engineering humans not the ethics of using a technology
where we possess limited understanding. The gap of understanding is closing
and will no longer be a valid excuse in the near future.

In fact, there are many traits and genetic diseases where we know 100% the
mechanism that triggers it all the way down to gene. See here:

[https://www.genome.gov/10001204/specific-genetic-
disorders/](https://www.genome.gov/10001204/specific-genetic-disorders/)

What is the ethical reasoning stopping people from using CRISPR on these
diseases?

I am still against the usage of CRISPR to cure these diseases because it opens
a door for the creation of a race of genetically superior humans. I am against
this purely for selfish reasons.

------
wallace_f
What's to stop nation states from pursuing eugenics projects behind closed
doors? Should it be assumed they already are?

~~~
shhehebehdh
The main thing to stop it is that we don’t know what genes to target to make
super humans. If we did, someone would probably try. As perhaps they should,
under some ethical systems.

~~~
wallace_f
They dont need super humans to gain technological superiority... just the best
hackers: engineers and scientists.

Our relatively enlarged skulls are the result of a random mutation which gave
some human/monkey, 2.4 million years ago, a diminutive, inferior jaw.(1) They
would have looked like a freak at the time.

Russian scientists have bred dog-like creatures from wolves in the last
century. In other words, they dont necessarily need to know which genes or
pairings produce their desired results. Trial and error is sufficient. And I
dont imagine every nation state is beholden to ethical standards. All they'd
need is educated guesses, and then to select their desired traits from a
litter of humans, euthanize the rest, and repeat. Hopefully this is not
happening, as it makes me feel ill to think about.

Of course, human gestation and maturity has a longer turnover, but gene
editing could produce accelerated results compared to classical breeding of
traits.

1-[https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040322/full/news040322-9.ht...](https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040322/full/news040322-9.html)

~~~
webmaven
_> Russian scientists have bred dog-like creatures from wolves in the last
century._

Foxes, not wolves:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox)

------
Arima11
Has anyone read the full article? It's writing clearly that the couple made
consent on false given information, as they thought it was a type of
vaccination. That lack of transparency is unethical.

~~~
buboard
The documents of his study were published on his website , can still be found
in archive:

Informed consent:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061149/http://www.sustc-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061149/http://www.sustc-
genome.org.cn/source/pdf/Informed-consent-women-English.pdf)

Second informed consent;
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061153/http://www.sustc-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061153/http://www.sustc-
genome.org.cn/source/pdf/Second-informed-consent-English.pdf)

Ethical approval:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061204/http://www.sustc-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061204/http://www.sustc-
genome.org.cn/source/pdf/HarmoniCare-Ethics-English.pdf)

Clinical registry:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061216/http://www.sustc-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181128061216/http://www.sustc-
genome.org.cn/source/pdf/CCR5-Clinical-Trial-Registry-
Chinese%20-%20English.pdf)

There is also some info including an excel file with the outcomes of the trial
here:
[http://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=32758](http://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=32758)

------
_wmd
Blog spam, the NYT article appears to be the primary and only source:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/world/asia/he-jiankui-
chi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/world/asia/he-jiankui-china-
scientist-gene-editing.html)

~~~
joshuamorton
The techchrunch article appears to contain additional updates and firsthand
reporting. It isn't blogspam.

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dane-pgp
The headline of the article is "Chinese scientist who allegedly created the
first genetically engineered babies is being detained" which avoids the typo
in the CRISPR acronym.

~~~
dang
That title doesn't fit the 80 char limit so we had to edit it. Typo is fixed
now—sorry!

------
garmaine
Because he embarrassed the country.

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Animats
We don't regulate who can breed with whom. Why is this worse?

~~~
cheez
It's like rape

~~~
Animats
?

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danieltillett
Is Dr He a scientist or a medical doctor? I don't think even in China
scientists get to muck around with patients. If he is a medical doctor can we
stop calling him a scientist.

------
ijidak
On a serious note, although this may seem humorous, if any technology was a
candidate to start a zombie apocalypse this would be it.

Small chance, yes, but with so little understood about what non-coding DNA
does, and viruses shuttling genetic material around, who knows.

