Gene-edited babies: What went wrong and what could go wrong

Haoyi Wang; Hui Yang

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000224

Gene-edited babies: What went wrong and what could go wrong

PLoS Biol. 2019 Apr 30;17(4):e3000224. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000224. eCollection 2019 Apr.

Authors

Haoyi Wang^{1

2

3}, Hui Yang^{4

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
² Institute for Stem Cell and Regeneration, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁴ Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Key Laboratory of Primate Neurobiology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
⁵ CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Shanghai, China.
⁶ Shanghai Research Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

During the second World Summit of Human Gene Editing, Jiankui He presented the gene-editing project that led to the birth of two baby girls with man-made C-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) mutations. This extremely irresponsible behavior violated the ethical consensus of scientists all over the world. His presentation revealed a troubling lack not only of basic medical ethics but also of the requisite understanding of genetics and gene editing. Here, we review the rationale and design of his experiment along with the presented data, and provide our scientific criticism of this misconduct.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

China
Gene Editing / ethics*
Genetic Therapy / ethics*
Genetic Therapy / legislation & jurisprudence
Germ Cells
Germ-Line Mutation / ethics*
Germ-Line Mutation / genetics
Humans
Morals
Receptors, CCR5 / genetics
Trust

Substances

CCR5 protein, human
Receptors, CCR5

Grants and funding

H.W. is supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFA0107703), Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(No. XDA16010503), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31722036). H.Y. is supported by R&D Program of China (2018YFC2000100 and 2017YFC1001302), CAS Strategic Priority Research Program (XDB32060000), National Natural Science Foundation of China (31871502), Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (2018SHZDZX05), and Shanghai City Committee of science and technology project (18411953700, 18JC1410100). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.