Nothing unethical to see here, move along, please
by Michael Cook | 8 Dec 2018 | 1 comment
While He Jiankui is probably chilling out in a Chinese jail, he is being roasted by scientists and bioethicists around the world. His offence was to alter the human germline deceptively and without the proper paperwork.
But at the same time, Antonio Regalado, of the MIT Technology Review, points out that scientists at Harvard University are steaming ahead with projects which involve modifying the germline.
The dean of Harvard Medical School, George Q. Daly, told the same conference where He unveiled his research, that “this is a transformative scientific technology with the power for great medical use.”
Regalado also spoke with Werner Neuhausser, of Harvard’s Stem Cell Institute, who is trying to modify sperm to lessen the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. He was upset by He Jiankui’s rogue experiment, too, but not because it was fundamentally unethical.
“The problem is that it’s going to make things much harder for everyone else following the rules if you jump so far ahead without proper approvals,” says Neuhausser. “That is the main concern. I don’t think the research is controversial, but everyone agrees it should be kept away from patients for now.”
He predicts that the Chinese scientist’s dream will eventually come true. “In the future, people will go to clinics and get their genomes tested, and have the healthiest baby they can have,” he says. “I think the whole field [of IVF] will switch from fertility to disease prophylaxis”—preventing illness.
Research of this kind is difficult for scientists in the US. Although it is not illegal, government funding for it is blocked. So Neuhausser is thinking of taking his research on embryos to ... China, where regulations are (or were) much more relaxed.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
It’s hard enough for doctors and scientists to resist the allure of profit in a democratic society, as an article below about Australian cosmetic surgery demonstrates. But when science becomes an arm of government propaganda, the pressures must be immense.
The picture is still cloudy, but the Chinese scientist who edited the genome of two babies, He Jiankui, seems to have succumbed. According to a Chinese bioethicist working in New Zealand (see article below), he was a dazzling star who was reaching the “commanding heights”, as President Xi Jinping had exhorted Chinese scientists to do earlier this year in a major policy speech.
Xinhuanet, the official newsagency, reported that Xi told scientists and engineers to have the “courage to explore the uncharted courses and realize the goal that key and core technologies are self-developed and controllable.”
Now He, having embarrassed the government over the questionable ethical standards of his work, has disappeared. He may be in jail. This must surely send mixed message to his colleagues. Be ethical and obscure. Or see what you can get away with and become gloriously rich.
It must be hard to be a scientist in today’s China.
The picture is still cloudy, but the Chinese scientist who edited the genome of two babies, He Jiankui, seems to have succumbed. According to a Chinese bioethicist working in New Zealand (see article below), he was a dazzling star who was reaching the “commanding heights”, as President Xi Jinping had exhorted Chinese scientists to do earlier this year in a major policy speech.
Xinhuanet, the official newsagency, reported that Xi told scientists and engineers to have the “courage to explore the uncharted courses and realize the goal that key and core technologies are self-developed and controllable.”
Now He, having embarrassed the government over the questionable ethical standards of his work, has disappeared. He may be in jail. This must surely send mixed message to his colleagues. Be ethical and obscure. Or see what you can get away with and become gloriously rich.
It must be hard to be a scientist in today’s China.
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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