Harvard profs defend ‘rogue scientist’
by Michael Cook | 1 Dec 2018 | 2 comments
George Q. Daley
Despite the hullabaloo over He Jiankui’s treatment of two babies, two of Harvard University’s most prominent scientists have defended him.
George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, told the summit “Just because the first steps into a new technology are missteps, it doesn't mean we shouldn't step back, restart and think about a plausible and responsible pathway for clinical translation."
He is in favour of moving ahead with germline editing. “I do think it’s time to move forward from the prospects of ethical permissibility to start outlining what an actual pathway to clinical applications would look like.” Apart from curing serious genetic diseases, he pointed out, the survival of the human race might be at stake. “There have even been discussions that we as a species need to maintain the flexibility in the face of future threats to take the control of our own heredity.”
George Church, one of Harvard’s star researchers, described the criticism heaped on He as “bullying”. In an interview with Science magazine Church said
“The most serious thing I’ve heard is that he didn’t do the paperwork right. He wouldn’t be the first person who got the paperwork wrong. It’s just that the stakes are higher. If it had gone south and someone had been damaged, maybe there would be some point. Like what happened with Jesse Gelsinger [who died in a 1999 gene therapy experiment]. But is this a Jesse Gelsinger or a Louise Brown [the first baby born through in vitro fertilization] event? That’s probably what it boils down to.”
Church refused to describe the experiment as “unethical”. True, he said, there is a global moratorium on human germline editing, “but a moratorium is not a permanent ban forever. It’s a checklist of what you have to do. It really seems like he was checking off the published list [see p. 132] by the National Academy of Sciences and added a few things of his own.”
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Many scientists were aghast this week when a Chinese expert in CRISPR, He Jiankui, announced the birth of gene-edited twins – probably the world’s first “designer babies”.
Dr He is being described as a “rogue scientist” who ignored the rules. But that is the way that whole field of reproductive technology has advanced. Bob Edwards, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing IVF, never sought ethics approvals or worried about the safety of the children.
In fact, he was an unashamed eugenicist. As Edwards said in 1999: “Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children.” Edwards did not even seem to worry about the higher rate of birth defects among IVF children. They were just collateral damage of the “clinical imperative”.
Yet now Bob Edwards is regarded as a hero -- because his risky experiment worked.
I think that it is a bit unfair to label Dr He as a rogue. In fact, his robe-tearing, scandalised colleagues agree that editing the human genome is ethical. They are just worried that he did not tick all the boxes and do all the paperwork. This is very bad public relations for them and for the Chinese government.
In fact, given the deteriorating place of human rights in China at the moment, He Jiankui will be lucky to escape a long prison term -- or even execution – to regild the government’s tarnished image as a watchdog of uber-ethical science.
Dr He is being described as a “rogue scientist” who ignored the rules. But that is the way that whole field of reproductive technology has advanced. Bob Edwards, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing IVF, never sought ethics approvals or worried about the safety of the children.
In fact, he was an unashamed eugenicist. As Edwards said in 1999: “Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children.” Edwards did not even seem to worry about the higher rate of birth defects among IVF children. They were just collateral damage of the “clinical imperative”.
Yet now Bob Edwards is regarded as a hero -- because his risky experiment worked.
I think that it is a bit unfair to label Dr He as a rogue. In fact, his robe-tearing, scandalised colleagues agree that editing the human genome is ethical. They are just worried that he did not tick all the boxes and do all the paperwork. This is very bad public relations for them and for the Chinese government.
In fact, given the deteriorating place of human rights in China at the moment, He Jiankui will be lucky to escape a long prison term -- or even execution – to regild the government’s tarnished image as a watchdog of uber-ethical science.
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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