Final Project – First Gene-Edited Babies

Recently, a Chinese researcher named He Jiankui has created the world’s first CRISPR-Cas9 babies through his secret, self-funded research. The creation of the first genetically edited babies is like the opening of Pandora’s Box, which provokes uncertain and uncontrollable ethical concerns and social issues that could ultimately alter the future human world. Genome editing is no doubt an advanced technology with wonderful prospects. A well-known example is the malaria-resistant mosquito which had been predicted to have enormous impacts on human health. Similar experiments have been conducted on other animals samples to find out solutions to diseases and to develop medicines for the sake of improving modern biomedicine. However, the research done by He Jiankui was considered illegal and unethical. First of all, the experiment had not been reported to any public hospitals or medical ethics committees. Secondly, He Jiankui had violated the medical informed consent law. Lastly, he performed adoslucation and genome editing and planted the human embryos inside the female participants’ wombs. The nature of this experiment was no different from human experimentation, which has highly been considered morally wrong by any means. There are also social issues caused by He Jiankui’s research. The biological and social effects on the girls are quite unpredictable. There could be other potential diseases caused by the immature technique of genome editing. All in all, researches like He Jiankui’s should be banned. The twins were born to have a distinct identity than normal people and to be more difficult to get the society’s acceptance. The long term effects on them are waited to be verified by time. Further researches need to be done rigorously for advancing the future application of the technique to lower the possible risk and to guarantee the benefits.