Chinese Academy of Engineering calls for actions on the birth of gene-edited infants

The Gene-Edited Babies Controversy in China: Field Philosophical Questioning

“…The Lancet online publishes letters from the Chinese Academy of Engineering(Zhang et al 2019a), the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences(Wang et al 2019), and from a group of 'Chinese HIV professionals'(Zhang et al 2019b) all criticizing the work of He Jiankui. The Chinese journal Medicine and Philosophy publishes an 'Appeal and Recommendations of the Medical Ethics Branch of Chinese Medical Association on the Gene-Edited Babies Event.…”

Una alarma nada excepcional: CRISPR/Cas9 y la edición de la línea germinal en seres humanos

“…Previamente al anuncio de He Jiankui, el campo ya contaba con ciertos acuerdos y consensos internacionales respecto a la permisibilidad de modificar los embriones de nuestra especie (Baltimore et al, 2015;Dickenson y Darnovsky, 2019; Organizing Committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, 2018). Asimismo, la mayoría de los países con los medios tecnocientíficos apropiados disponían también de regulaciones prohibitivas respecto a la transferencia de esos embriones al sistema reproductivo humano, incluyendo a China (Krimsky, 2019;Zhang y Lie, 2018).…”

“…La noticia de la edición genética de la línea germinal humana generó repercusiones internacionales. Cabe recordar que en la mayoría de los países del mundo, incluido China, ese tipo de procedimientos se encuentra prohibido (Wang et al, 2019;Zhang y Lie, 2018). A su vez, junto con los aspectos legales, se proclamó que el experimento realizado violó diversos principios éticos vinculados con la seguridad y eficacia de la tecnología empleada, al mismo tiempo que no contempló adecuadamente el balance entre los riesgos involucrados y los beneficios potenciales (Ma, Zhang y Qin, 2019;Zhang, Chen, Yi, Tang y Wang, 2019).…”

“Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” or “Here Today, Stay a Long While”: The Divergent Paths of Two Host Factors Important in Viral Infections

“…He was immediately vilified by the Chinese and global scientific community for moving forward with an experiment so brazenly counter to the internationally accepted measured strategy: there was no unmet clinical need in this scenario, he manipulated the entire germline for these twins, he did not publish the results in a peer-review journal but via YouTube video and press interview, and consent procedures for this family appeared to misrepresent the research. 39,40 This episode highlights the challenges involved with trying to manipulate host susceptibility to an infection and reveals a researcher who put his personal agenda ahead of his patient's well-being and of the values of the broader scientific community. Regardless, it is clear that the host-protective effect of the D32-CCR5 mutation will retain an integral role in HIV cure and prevention efforts for many years to come.…”