First babies with an edited genome (He Jiankui)
Primeros bebés con el genoma editado (He Jiankui)
- Date
- noviembre de 2018 · confidence high
- Place
- Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
- Credited to
- He Jiankui and his team (Southern University of Science and Technology)
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
In November 2018 He Jiankui announced the birth of twin girls whose embryos had been edited with CRISPR-Cas9 in the CCR5 gene, aiming for HIV resistance. It is the first known human germline editing and was widely condemned for lacking medical justification and ethical safeguards.
He was sentenced in December 2019 to three years in prison and a fine. The edits did not reproduce the natural CCR5-Δ32 mutation and mosaicism was present; the case is cited as an example of how germline editing should not be done. Huang Junjiu (Guangzhou, 2015) had already edited non-viable human embryos.
What it led to
- condemnation by the scientific community and moratoria on germline editing
- Chinese criminal law on genetic experimentation (2021) and WHO guidance (2021)
- report of the international commission on germline editing (2020)