Gene edited baby, experts say: “An absurd research, superficial and substandard”

In a commentary article published in the famous journal PLOS Biology, two Chinese genetics experts, Haoyi Wang of the Institute of Zoology and Hui Yang of the Institute of Neurosciences, both part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, strongly criticized “the hazard and irresponsible experiment” carried out by the geneticist He Jiankui that led to the birth of two twins whose DNA had been modified. The first case in the world of genetic editing on human embryos.

The comment. For the two researchers, in addition to going against every guideline of the Chinese (and international) ethics committees, the research may not achieve the desired results. “His presentation – they wrote on the commentary – revealed a worrying lack not only of basic medical ethics but also of the necessary understanding of genetics and genetic editing”. According to Haoyi and Hui, in fact, in addition to being incredibly risky for the health of the two girls, the experiment could prove useless: the mutation of the CCR5 gene can occur naturally and is actually associated with some resistance to virus infections, but this data refers to studies based on European populations, not Chinese. Furthermore, the mutation does not block all HIV strains.

Therefore, it would be a science made “superficially” and “substandard” that will probably influence the human gene-editing discourse. A discourse that is worth backing up, as suggested by the authors of the documentary “Code of the wild“, and which the two researchers believe nevertheless may lead to benefits for everyone, since “these technologies can provide solutions for genetic diseases but only when a consensus was reached and a regulatory framework was put in place for the treatment of specific medical implications “.

The story. Last November the research of He Jiankui, associate professor of the Biology department of the Chinese Southern University of Science and Technology, which had led to the birth in China of twins whose genome had been modified, through CRISPR/cas9. The purpose of it was preventing the two girls from being infected by HIV, of which the father was a carrier, modifying a particular gene (CCR5) that encodes the receptors in the white blood cells, making them, in theory, immune to the virus. After the communication of the study and the openly hostile reactions of the scientific community and the media, which questioned the method used and the ethics behind such experimentation, his university dissociated itself from the research and the Chinese institutions investigated the researcher.