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

During the second World Summit of Human Gene Editing, Jiankui He presented the geneediting 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.On November 25, 2018, Jiankui He, an associate professor from Southern University of Science and Technology, announced that two babies with edited C-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) genes had been born in China.This genetic modification, he claimed, would render these babies immune to HIV infection.On November 28, He presented the experimental data of this project at the second World Summit of Human Gene Editing.While solid evidence of this experiment remains to be disclosed and the veracity of such claims ascertained, the experimental design and data presented at the summit revealed serious misconduct on both the scientific and ethical levels.As researchers working in the gene-editing field in China, we were completely shocked by this news.It would appear that He had been doing this work in secret.As far as we know, He has not published noteworthy scientific papers in the gene-editing field and was not actively involved in the gene editing community in China.We were enraged by this extremely irresponsible misconduct, which clearly violated the regulatory and medical ethics of China and nations all over the world.Here, we focus on the pitfalls of the scientific aspects, assuming the data He presented were true, because we believe that responsible scrutiny and discussion of this event requires a good understanding of the scientific facts.First, we would like to criticize his overall rationale.He claimed that he edited the CCR5 gene to prevent HIV infection in the babies, whose father is an HIV carrier (the mother does