Good morning! Andrew Joseph here filling in for Megan for one more day. She'll be back with you Monday.
A staid scientific summit it was not
Few scientific meetings come with bombshells, but the claim from a Chinese scientist that he had helped make the world's first gene-edited babies shocked those gathered in Hong Kong for this week's summit on human genome editing. Now that attendees have headed home, a few questions to keep in mind:
- What happens to He Jiankui? The scientist who said he did the work is under investigation, and Chinese authorities said they have halted the research. What does that mean for the second pregnancy He claims to have started?
- Are there other gene-edited babies or pregnancies? The summit's organizers acknowledged this week they can't be sure.
- Will this set back clinical applications of genome editing? In an interview with STAT Thursday, NIH Director Francis Collins said: "If I have a concern here, it’s that those who haven’t been tracking this closely might conclude that the whole field of gene editing is fraught with ethical challenges."
Reminder: STAT's Sharon Begley is back from Hong Kong and will be holding an online chat with STAT Plus subscribers at noon ET today about all things genome editing. Sign up and submit questions here.
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