China has sentenced scientist He Jiankui to three years in prison for conducting experiments on genetically modified babies. The court said Jiankui's team "exceeded the moral threshold."
A Chinese court has sentenced scientist He Jiankui to three years in prison and a fine of 3 million yuan (about $ 430.000) for experiments on modified baby genes.
Two of his colleagues, who were a group, were also convicted with him. His first colleague, Zhang Renli, was fined 1 million yuan (about $ 143.000) and sentenced to two years in prison, while his second, Qin Jinzhou, was fined 500.000 yuan (about $ 71.000) and sentenced to 18 months in prison. two-year suspension.
According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, "the three defendants did not have the proper certification for the excercise of medicineand, in the pursuit of fame and wealth, deliberately violated national regulations in the field of scientific research and medical treatment”.
Jiankui became famous when it announced in November 2018 that he made the first genetically modified babies in the world, the twin girls Lula and Nana, using the CRISPR / Cas9 tool for gene editing. This kind work prohibited in the USA and in other countries because of the ethical concerns of handling human embryos, as well as the risk it poses since it can create unintended side effects that could be passed on to future generations.
The scientific team in China was strongly criticized for the project, and was then fired from its positions at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen.
The experiment, according to the scientists, aimed to give the babies immunity to HIV by altering the CCR5 gene, which is believed to affect resistance to HIV. Although everyone has two copies of each gene (one from each parent), the researchers addsignalnan that only one copy of the gene was processed.