He Jiankui tried to protect ‘CRISPR babies’ against HIV. But his attempted fix shortens lives, study shows
People with the rare genetic variants that 'CRISPR babies' scientist He Jiankui tried to engineer into embryos have a 21% higher mortality rate, scientists reported on Monday.
Last January, the Chinese scientist who created the first “CRISPR babies” — twin girls born from gene-edited embryos — sent an American bioethicist friend an email suggesting he was having second thoughts about what he’d done.
“I have been thinking,” He Jiankui wrote Stanford University bioethicist Dr. William Hurlbut. “I recognize I pushed too quickly into a first-of-kind clinical study without the necessary open dialog with regulators, the scientific community, and the public.” Hurlbut shared the email with STAT — the first communication to be made public in which He is known to have expressed any regrets.
The premature birth
