Hong Kong authorities have announced the cancellation of the work visa of the Chinese scientist sentenced to prison for creating the world’s first genetically modified babies, it was reported on Wednesday.
Immigration officials from the former British colony suspect that the investigator falsified the application form, according to public broadcaster RTHK.
Chinese scientist He Jiankui, released in April last year after serving a three-year sentence, said on Tuesday his visa had been approved through a local talent recruitment program and he was looking for collaborators to develop research on gene therapy for diseases. rare.
However, late this Tuesday, the authorities of the semi-autonomous city reported having canceled the authorization of a person who “provided false information” in the application and added that a criminal investigation had been opened, but always without providing any identification.
The controversial researcher, who rose to global fame in 2018 after claiming to have successfully engineered genetically modified babies to resist HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, said he intended to carry out research gene editing in the former colony of the UK, using artificial devices. intelligence.
From He’s experiment, carried out using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique, three babies were born: in 2018, two twins named Lulu and Nana, and the following year, another named Amy.
In the last public appearance, at a conference at the University of Hong Kong, in November 2018, the scientist was “proud of the work”, stressing that the study did not aim to eliminate genetic diseases, but “to give girls a natural ability”. to resist possible future HIV infection.
The scandal prompted Chinese authorities to revise regulations on genetic alteration in humans, requiring the approval of clinical research in this field or other “high-risk biomedical technologies.”
The Chinese government has also published new guidelines to reform ethical review processes in areas such as life sciences, medicine and artificial intelligence.
Source: TSF
