In 2018, a nervous-looking He Jiankui took the stage at a scientific conference in Hong Kong. A hush settled over the packed auditorium as the soft-spoken Chinese scientist adjusted his microphone and confirmed the circulating media reports: He had created the world’s first gene-edited babies.
Three little girls were born with modifications to their genomes that were intended to protect them against HIV. The changes he’d made to their DNA were permanent and heritable, meaning they could be passed down to future generations.
A Chinese court sent him to prison for three years, and the Chinese government banned genome editing for reproductive purposes. Now He is trying