By June Ganguli Life is not something to be played with. Geneticists around the world are all aware of the dangers of messing with human life, and they respect the laws that safeguard it. What would happen, though, if someone pushed the boundaries? He Jiankui, a geneticist in Shenzhen, China, claims to have genetically engineered the first pair of human twins, leaving the scientific community in shock and horror. Jiankui says he removed a gene from the twins, preventing them from contracting the HIV virus. Genetically altering humans has always been a major moral concern, and now the deed has been done.
The parents of the twins, whom Jiankui names Grace and Mark (for privacy) weren’t going to have children because Mark has HIV. Having faced discrimination due to his disease, Mark didn’t want his children to face the same. Employers in many countries will fire people with HIV and doctors can refuse medical care. Jiankui believes he has done the right thing, providing an opportunity for Mark and Grace to have children, but the scientific community feels differently. Frankly, no one man should tamper with human life without the supervision of his peers. There are laws against gene editing on humans, because of the risk of dangerous mutations causing harm to the individual and future generations. The National Health Commission of China says that Jiankui’s work “seriously violates China’s laws, regulations, and ethical standards.” Though the twins were born normal and healthy, Oxford Professor of ethics Julian Savulescu expressed his concerns to BBC stating, "Gene editing itself is experimental and is still associated with off-target mutations, capable of causing genetic problems early and later in life, including the development of cancer." Perhaps Jiankui would have gotten a better reaction if he’d been upfront about his experiment. Jiankui kept his project a secret from everyone creating a suspicious aura around his work. For example, he did not name the journal to which he submitted his study nor the experts that supposedly reviewed it. Also, the Southern University of Science and Technology, Jiankui’s employer, was unaware of his experiments. Jiankui said he was “proud” of his work when he presented it at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, but the event's organizing board said his research was "irresponsible". In response to Jiankui’s presentation, more than 120 Chinese scientists stated that "directly experimenting on humans is nothing but crazy." Jiankui’s downfall could have been avoided if Jiankui had followed international norms on gene editing, maintained transparency with his institution and consulted with his peers instead of relying solely on his own findings.
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