Don't call me Chinese Frankenstein, says jailed scientist who tinkered with baby DNA

Telegraph

21-03-2025

The Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for secretly creating the world's first genetically-engineered babies has claimed he will be remembered as China's Charles Darwin for ultimately eliminating natural selection.
He Jiankui, who shocked the scientific world in 2018 when he said he had rewritten the DNA of two twins, Lulu and Nana, told The Telegraph that he had no regrets over the controversial experiment. An investigation by Chinese authorities – which also revealed a third gene-edited baby – resulted in a three-year prison sentence.
'I hope people remember me as the 'Chinese Darwin' in 50 years,' said Mr He, who asked to be called a 'pioneer of gene editing'.
Mr He's defence of his work contrasts with his public image. He was dubbed 'China's Frankenstein' when it first emerged that he had illegally carried out gene editing on babies. He was sentenced to three years in jail in 2019.
While the case shocked the world at the time, but Mr He claimed he will be proved to have been on the right side of history. He predicted that countries, including the UK, would legalise gene editing in humans within the next two years – as he claims it would allow people to cure Alzheimer's and cancer.
The cost, he says, will be a few thousand dollars, suggesting that most parents will choose to edit embryos' DNA.
The scientist has returned to a laboratory in China after leaving prison in 2022, and has proposed resuming his research to eliminate Alzheimer's disease.
However, Mr He admitted that he was 'deeply worried' about where his work could ultimately lead.
Genetic editing – effectively cutting out parts of DNA and replacing it to alter genetic makeup – has been the subject of lab experiments for decades, as well as being a plentiful source of inspiration for science fiction. However, editing humans was seen as an ethical and scientific minefield, and was widely banned.
Mr He disregarded these concerns to conduct his own experiment on unborn babies. He ultimately announced on YouTube that 'two beautiful little Chinese girls, Lulu and Nana, came crying into the world as healthy as any other babies' after having their genetic code altered.
Mr He was a relative unknown in the cutting-edge field of gene editing. The son of rice farmers in China, he was a promising student and had won a scholarship to study in the US, including a fellowship at California's revered Stanford University before returning to China. However, he had not made an enormous impression on senior academics and so his announcement seemingly came from nowhere. He was just 34 when the scandal broke.
The twins' genes had been tweaked as IVF embryos using the Crispr gene editing technique to make them more resistant to HIV, which their father had contracted. 'I understand this work will be controversial,' Mr He said at the time, but added: 'I am willing to take the criticism.'
The backlash came swiftly. Shenzhen's Southern University of Science and Technology, where Mr He worked, distanced itself from the research. The experiment was slammed as deeply unethical, as well as medically unnecessary, and it was alleged that the twins' parents were not fully consulted about the potential risks.
In 2019, Mr He was arrested and sentenced to prison, with a court saying he had carried out 'illegal medical practices' while 'seeking fame and wealth'. It emerged that he had raised millions of investment for his own biotech start-ups.
Mr He declined to answer questions about his prison experience.
'Every pioneer or prophet must suffer'
However, he said he did not harbour any regrets over his work: 'If I go back to 2018, I will do it again, in exactly the same way.'
He said the response from the scientific community was unwarranted, but not unusual. 'I thought I had helped two families and their parents appreciated me. I did not expect that the world would respond so badly,' Mr He said.
'I once thought it is unfair. But now, I believe it is fair. Every pioneer or prophet must suffer.'
I will apologize for the gene edited baby experiment, only if their parents have requested it. However, they are happy with the results now.
— Jiankui He (@Jiankui_He) October 23, 2024
Mr He has compared himself to Edward Jenner, the English physician who discovered the smallpox vaccine and was initially mocked for his work. Satirists claimed patients would grow cow horns after being inoculated.
Last year, Mr He said he was attacked as he walked into his car, suffering multiple injuries, and that his assailant had been staking out his office for a week before the assault.
Despite the public backlash, the scientist said the gene-edited twins – as well as a third baby born to a different mother – are healthy and living normal lives.
Since his imprisonment, gene therapy, a less controversial treatment involving introducing new genes to fight disease, has made major breakthroughs. And gene editing has also advanced in the lab, including the recent creation of a 'woolly mouse' as a potential step to reviving the woolly mammoth.
However, seven years later, there is little sign of human gene editing experiments being repeated again.
China tightened up gene editing laws after Mr He's case, and the practice remains illegal in major countries as well as strongly discouraged by the World Health Organisation. Mr He has hit out at the scientific community that condemned him, saying Crispr's pioneers have wasted billions without helping patients.
After prison, he returned to the lab at the Wuchang University of Technology in Wuhan, the city that was cradle of the pandemic. Mr He ducked the question of whether Covid-19 might have escaped from a lab, saying he has no idea.
He is now working at a research park in Beijing 'with the help of an assistant and a few interns'.
A photographer is also frequently present, it appears. Mr He frequently posts on X, pronouncing one-sentence assertions such as 'Tinkering with human embryos will certainly be worth the risk' and 'Gene editing in human embryos will be as popular as iPhone' with portrait photos of himself in the lab.
Tinkering with human embryos will certainly be worth the risk. pic.twitter.com/ecsKZDnTFN
— Jiankui He (@Jiankui_He) February 24, 2025
Unnamed Chinese and American companies are funding his work, Mr He has said. No funding has come from the Chinese government, he said.
One person who has reportedly offered to finance his work is Ryan Shea, a US cryptocurrency entrepreneur, who praised him as a 'brave scientist ... willing to challenge conventional wisdom'. However, Mr He insisted that gene editing should benefit society 'rather than servicing a few rich men'.
Editing embryos' DNA will 'permanently eradicate cancer'
Mr He recently released a research proposal for a gene editing experiment aimed at fighting Alzheimer's – a disease that has no effective drug – with a mutation that may decrease the disease's impact.
His research proposal states that it will first be tested on mice, and then human embryos, but 'no human embryo will be implanted for pregnancy'.
He insisted his revolution is moving forward. In November, South Africa's national health department revised its ethics guidelines in a way that appeared to allow for genome editing, something that has also provoked an ethical outcry.
'The first gene edited baby after my work will be born in South Africa in two years,' Mr He said, predicting that the UK, Japan, Korea and Canada will follow.
There is little sign of British laws being changed to allow human gene editing, although a citizens' jury of people with genetic conditions overwhelmingly voted in favour of the idea in a project organised by the University of Cambridge in 2023.
In 20 years, gene editing in human embryos will be as popular as iPhone pic.twitter.com/BWoJ52h6ei
— Jiankui He (@Jiankui_He) December 21, 2024
Mr He argued that governments should pay 'in full' for the treatment, given how much it will ease the burden on health services. Editing embryos' DNA will not only eliminate Alzheimer's but 'permanently eradicate cancer', he claimed.
However, gene editing presents more than just economic and health concerns. There are ethical questions, too.
The rise of genetic editing techniques has raised the prospect of designer babies: embryos edited for eye-colour, athletic ability or intelligence. Mr He has said he opposed allowing billionaires to create superior children, and that we should ban gene editing for these purposes. But he does worry that his experiments have started to erase natural selection in a way that will be difficult to control.
Despite his hope to one day be remembered as the 'Chinese Darwin', Mr He admitted he is 'deeply worried that one day humans will no longer be controlled by Darwin's evolution'.
If that prediction comes true, Mr He will certainly be part of the story, for good or bad.