The director of the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday described a Chinese scientist’s claim to have genetically edited a human embryo as “deeply disturbing.”
“It is profoundly unfortunate that the first apparent application of this powerful technique to the human germline has been carried out so irresponsibly,” NIH Director Francis Collins said regarding the claim by Dr. He Jiankui on Monday that he modified two embryos in infant twins to make them immune to HIV.
Collins added that He and his team “flaunted international ethical norms” by carrying out the project in secret.
He said that there needed to be limits on the type of genetic editing technology that led to the claim from He, which hasn’t been independently verified or confirmed.
“The need for development of binding international consensus on setting limits for this kind of research, now being debated in Hong Kong, has never been more apparent,” Collins said. “Without such limits, the world will face the serious risk of a deluge of similarly ill-considered and unethical projects.”
Dr. He broke his silence on the experiment, first revealed by the Associated Press on Monday, during a speech early Wednesday.
He said at a conference on gene editing that there is another potential pregnancy from genetically modified human embryos. He has also submitted the research on the project to a scientific journal for review, but did not list the journal, according to a report from CNN.
The chairman of the conference, David Baltimore, bashed He’s claims because there are treatments for HIV and that the experiment was not medically necessary, CNN reported.
