Ethical, scientific issues plagued paper from 'CRISPR babies' team - STAT

Ethical, scientific issues plagued paper from 'CRISPR babies' team - STAT

Exclusive: Ethical issues plagued newly surfaced paper by ‘CRISPR babies’ scientist

The "CRISPR babies" scientist He Jiankui tried to publish a paper describing additional experiments much like those that led to the birth of the world's first genome-edited babies — but the paper was rejected by an international journal after outside scientists raised ethical and scientific concerns, STAT's Sharon Begley has learned. Here's what you need to know:

• The paper: In the unpublished paper, He and his colleagues say they used CRISPR-Cas9 to target the PCSK9 gene in the very early embryos of mice, monkeys, and people. When both of a person's PCSK9 genes have a certain mutation, they develop sky-high cholesterol.
• The context: The rejected paper didn't report starting a pregnancy with the edited embryos. But it's one of just a handful of experiments worldwide in which scientists edited normal human embryos.
• The authors: He, a colleague at his lab at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzen, China, and several scientists and doctors at Third Affiliated Hospital in Shenzen are listed as authors. So is Rice University's Michael Deem, who was He's Ph.D. adviser. Deem is under investigation by Rice for his involvement in the experiment that led to the birth of the CRISPR babies.

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