A Chinese court has sentenced He Jiankui, the scientist who claimed to have created the world’s first gene-edited children, to three years in prison for illegal medical practices. He was also fined 3 million yuan (£327,360). Two colleagues received lesser sentences.
The court in Shenzhen found He guilty of forging ethics review documents to recruit couples for his research. The couples included a man with HIV and a woman without, who were offered IVF in return for participation. He used the Crispr-Cas9 technique to modify embryos, aiming to make them immune to HIV by altering the CCR5 gene.
He’s work, carried out on seven embryos in late 2018, sparked global condemnation for deceiving vulnerable patients and using an untested procedure. A subsequent analysis by MIT Technology Review cast doubt on his claims, with experts suggesting the mutations he created were not the intended ones and could have unknown consequences.
Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute said it was “far too premature” for embryo genome editing intended for pregnancies. Standards and regulations are being examined by the Academies Commission and a WHO committee, expected to report in 2020.
