Latest news with #HeJiankui
Hindustan Times
11-05-2025
- Science
- Hindustan Times
Fraud it, till you make it: Silicon Valley's attraction to cons
It was at a CRISPR community event in Cupertino, that I overheard two scientists talking about the ethics of creating gene-edited embryos. As I expected, Dr He Jiankui was mentioned. The infamous scientist from China is in the Valley right now, looking for funding and support for a new commercial venture that is focused on lowering the risk of Alzheimer's disease through gene-editing research. Ever since CRISPR had made gene-editing simpler and cheaper, the scientific community across the world had brought out regulations to prevent unethical experimenting on editing humans. Dr He Jiankui gained international infamy in 2018 when he announced that he had used a CRISPR machine on human embryos at a Chinese university lab, resulting in the birth of two designer babies. Even at that time, as an article in Science revealed, he had had support from his international colleagues and the Silicon Valley. Once the controversy became global, however, the Chinese government portrayed He as a rogue actor as did his scientific colleagues in the USA and China. But Silicon Valley has a shorter memory, which is why He is here, seven years later. Dr He's story made me think about how VC firms in the Valley are constantly putting their money in risky, potentially illegal, irregulated ventures and so are vulnerable to scams and fraud. Just last year, when anyone who used the words 'AI' was getting funded, Devin AI was touted by its company Cognition AI as the world's 'first AI software engineer'. The hype helped the startup reach a $2 billion valuation before a software developer on Github checked and said the AI couldn't even execute basic engineering tasks and that the startup was using deception to pretend it could do tasks it couldn't. Regardless of the falsification and deception, VC firms continue to invest in the startup. Why? Perhaps its FOMO combined with the unique VC math. About 90% of the startups that VC firms invest in, fail. Sometimes the tech doesn't work, sometimes it's the model or the product, or their vision of the future. Investors in the Silicon Valley are used to failure and can take risks. What they're constantly looking for is a tech innovation so disruptive that it cannot be replicated easily and will have unlimited growth potential – giving them a unicorn and quite a lot of profit. Combine this tendency to take risks with an insane amount of money floating in the Bay Area. In 2024, VC Funds here raised about $70 billion according to data released by Pitch Book: All of them looking for the next ChatGPT. This hunger or desperation to invest in the next big thing, with the ability to take a risk on an emerging technology, leaves these investors vulnerable to being exploited by someone with a great story, at the right moment and with the right hype. Like CRISPR babies, or Sam Bankman-Fried who, if you remember, used the money that investors put into his crypto exchange to fund his own crypto trading – something illegal in most markets across the world. In 2021, Alameda Research was a unicorn and Bankman-Fried was Valley's much-loved rather nerdy crypto founder, famous for effective altruism, a twisted capitalist philanthropy that encourages people to make money and then give it away for charity. Everyone – from politicians to venture capitalists – called him a genius. Two years later, when the crypto market crashed, Alameda Research filed for bankruptcy and the scam broke out. Hundreds of thousands of customers lost their investments, Silicon Valley Bank, the second largest bank in the country went bankrupt. And criminal charges were filed against Bankman-Fried and others in his inner circle. It's not that Bankman-Fried wanted to defraud. The Valley had taught him that it was important to break rules and things, and move fast. He had done what he had learnt and been rewarded for. And he probably had been under extreme pressure to perform. Once founders get funded, even the most ethical ones are under extreme pressure not only to build the innovation itself, but also grow rapidly and 'fake it till you make it'. The latter, an ethos to prioritize appearances and hype over substance encourages inflated valuations and unsustainable practices. Mostly it means lying through your teeth. One of the oft-quoted scams in this category is that of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of a healthcare startup Theranos. Holmes started the company when she was 19 and claimed she had developed a new technology that could run a multitude of tests on human blood at a fraction of the cost of current technology. Even though, according to a New Yorker profile, Holmes' details about Theranos' technology were 'comically vague', in 2015, the company's valuation was $10 billion. Within three years, Holmes and one of her associates were found guilty and are currently in prison. These cycles of hype and crash are humdrum everyday part of the Valley's life. In April, after the controversy, Cognition AI slashed its price from $500 a month for an AI engineer to $20 monthly. It's currently valued at $4 billion, despite questions about its product. If you have a cool idea and can show the conviction to do it, there's a chance that someone in the Valley will fund it. Combine that optimism about technology, and you know that another scam is as likely as a new hype cycle. Till fraud do us part?
Washington Post
06-04-2025
- Science
- Washington Post
A disgraced gene-editing scientist wants back in the lab.
China's most infamous scientist is attempting a comeback. He Jiankui, who went to jail for three years after claiming he had created the world's first genetically altered babies, says he remains committed to returning to the lab — and to using gene editing to cure diseases like Alzheimer's. Even though he has no lab and no academic affiliations. He can't even travel: He says the Chinese government has confiscated his passport. But far from being disgraced after international condemnation, He presents himself as a martyr to the controversial technology, even as other scientists worry about its ethical implications. 'There has to be some person to speak for it,' He, 41, said in an interview. 'And I am the person.' But much about He's original experiment and purported return to science remains murky. He admits he doesn't have a lab in Beijing — despite posting photos on X to the contrary — and his relationship to the Chinese government, which is intent on developing a leading biotechnology industry, is, well, complicated. Simply put: He could be a pioneer making a remarkable return in pursuit of Beijing's ambitions for scientific dominance. Or he could be a charlatan trying to fake it until he makes it — again. 'There have always been holes in his comeback story,' said Abigail Coplin, an expert on the intersection of science and politics in China at Vassar College. 'He definitely wants to push this narrative about himself being back in the lab.' 'It's really unclear whether it is a facade,' she added. He, who pursued his doctorate at Rice University in Texas and postdoc studies at Stanford University, shot to notoriety in 2018 when he announced he had altered three human embryos to make them immune to HIV. He said the experiment used CRISPR technology to conduct 'germ line gene-editing,' meaning the alterations could be passed down to the babies' descendants. Though He had been a rising star in the Chinese scientific world — he ran a lab and several genomic-sequencing start-ups — his experiment resulted in immediate rebuke. Many Chinese and international scientists said it could lead to a world of 'designer babies,' where parents could choose traits like race or intelligence for their children. Others worried that the children's parents were not adequately warned about potential health consequences. He's experiment, which he said was motivated by a desire to 'earn glory' for his country, became a symbol of how China's effort to rapidly transform into a scientific superpower could come at ethical costs. In the years since, Beijing has scrambled to address those concerns, releasing strict prohibitions on all germ line gene editing of human embryos in clinical research for reproductive purposes and expanding ethics review requirements. China's Ministry of Science and Technology did not respond to requests for comment. The Chinese Embassy in the United States declined to comment. Regardless of whether He's comeback turns out to be more of a public relations stunt than a genuine research effort, the persistent secrecy around his work underscores the challenges for China as it attempts to spur scientific discoveries without overstepping ethical boundaries. 'We need to strike the balance,' said Ma Yonghui, a bioethics scholar at Xiamen University. 'We need to encourage scientific progress and also to maintain that this research needs to be conducted responsibly and ethically and also sustainably.' 'There is still a long way to go,' she added. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is on a self-sufficiency drive, aiming to transform the country into an independent technology powerhouse. Beijing has poured billions into biotech, hoping to harness potential applications in health care for its rapidly aging population, as well as in agriculture and even military technology. This investment has yielded results: China's biotech industry is making waves overseas, with an increasing number of Chinese pharmaceutical companies seeking licensing agreements abroad and outperforming Western drugs. But biotech has also become a point of friction in the U.S.-China relationship, and Washington has targeted the Chinese industry with export and investment restrictions. Joy Y. Zhang, a scientific governance expert at the University of Kent in England, said that tension may lead scientists to conduct riskier research in the name of winning the U.S.-China scientific competition and damage attempts to create global guardrails. 'What I worry about is that geopolitical tension is going to tint every nation's decision on their scientific strategies,' she said. 'It is only through this kind of dialogue and, in a way, transparency, that we can actually start thinking about next-step regulations.' He, for his part, is not willing to have a transparent dialogue. He frequently speaks with international journalists and posts grand pronouncements in English on X, which is highly unusual given his past brushes with Chinese law enforcement. He often includes photos of himself wearing a white coat in an empty lab or in front of a bookcase displaying the Bible and a book by Xi. 'I want to be the leader of gene editing for the whole world,' he posted on X in March. But he is vague about specifics. He hasn't released any evidence about the current state of the three babies involved in his 2018 experiment, claiming that they are healthy. He is also evasive about his current research. After being released from jail, he worked for five months at Wuchang University of Technology, a private institution in Wuhan, which did not respond to requests for comment. He said he was fired after talking to foreign journalists. He then moved to the southern Chinese island of Hainan but left in September after he said he was attacked in a parking lot by a stranger. He had claimed to operate a lab in Beijing, where he said he was researching gene-editing solutions for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and Alzheimer's, motivated by his mother's battle with the disease. He refused to provide any detailed results from that work but said it does not involve any research on human embryos. He posted a business plan on X this winter, soliciting $10 million in funding to set up labs in Beijing and Austin. He took down the document soon after, claiming he has enough funding, but declined to name any backers. As for the lab he posts photos of on X? A Post reporter visited the complex — which is affiliated with China's prestigious Peking University — in March, and a security guard said He wasn't allowed in anymore. After the visit, He admitted he had recently been forced to move out. If the public pronouncements are He's attempt to manifest his rehabilitation, they might be working. Benjamin Hurlbut, a bioethicist at Arizona State University, said that some parts of the scientific community are increasingly accepting of genomic boundary breaking, and the mere fact that He is able to openly talk about his plans indicates he may have some support from the government. 'Not only has he not been shut down, he's gone from being very careful initially and staying out of visibility to become progressively bolder and more provocative,' he said. 'I can't say that he's being encouraged to say the kinds of things that he's saying, but he certainly isn't being discouraged.' He said he receives no state funding. Zhang, from the University of Kent, said He's comeback attempts reveal that China and the global scientific community haven't settled the ethical dilemmas posed by genomics. 'If China wants to become the real global scientific power,' she said, it has to lead on ethics, as well. 'A mentality shift needs to happen.' He does not appear to have had a mentality shift. Last month, he posted on X that 'ethics is holding back scientific innovation and progress.' Comparing himself to Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, he said his work changed the world in ways he didn't expect. But asked whether he would regret unleashing gene editing onto the world later in life, just as Oppenheimer did with nuclear weapons, he was evasive. 'I will answer this question maybe when I am 80 years old,' he said. Christian Shepherd in Beijing, Pei-Lin Wu in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Rogue Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Gear Up for More Human Experiments
That rogue scientist who created HIV-resistant designer babies is apparently gearing up for more human gene-editing research. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, He Jiankui said he wants to conduct human trials on his next big project: encoding genetics to prevent Alzheimer's disease, a heritable illness, in future generations. He identified South Africa, where the government declared in 2024 that it's open to the "significant potential" of genetic editing, as a good place for those trials to take place. Before that, He wants to send two Chinese colleagues to the US to conduct trials on mice and monkeys. As the controversial researcher told the WSJ, he can't go himself because his home country, which imprisoned him in 2019 for scientific misconduct and fraud over his gene-hacking experiments on human fetuses that were subsequently born, won't renew his passport. Aside from the broad strokes of a comeback, which seem to be more logistical in nature than anything else, we don't know almost anything else about how He plans to start up again. The self-styled "Chinese Darwin" has declined to identify his financial backers and doesn't, as the WSJ notes, have any affiliations with any academic institution. When the newspaper tried to figure out who he may be working with in the US, it was unable to do so, and South Africa's health department didn't respond to requests for comment from WSJ reporters. Lofty promises and opaque funding are, of course, nothing new to science. But He is no normal scientist, and as the newspaper notes, his reputation as "China's Frankenstein" has followed the 41-year-old gene-hacking pioneer even after his release from prison last year. It's no wonder he doesn't want to reveal who's funding him: they could, conceivably, be ostracized for doing so. It also probably doesn't help that He regularly posts photos of himself in his mysterious lab — which the Chinese government would not, the scientist insisted to the WSJ, allow foreign visitors to enter without permission — alongside cryptic declarations, including his claim that ethics are "holding back" science. For all that creepiness, however, He clearly has heart. Peppered between self-aggrandizing posts are a number of shockingly egalitarian claims, including an insistence that "health is the universal human right" and that "'Survival of the fittest' is unfair for the people born with genetic disadvantages." "No one," He wrote in the latter post, "should be left behind." That ethos in particular seems to be related to the seemingly personal inspiration behind the scientist's latest avenue of research: his mother, who is in her late 60s, has Alzheimer's that has progressed far enough that she no longer recognizes her infamous son. If he can get human trials up and running, He wants to see if he can mimic a genetic mutation found in Icelanders who appear to have a protein that protects them against the debilitating cognitive disease. That's a far cry from the admittedly reckless experiments he conducted on embryos — and it seems far less ethically dubious, too. And what of the children born of those experiments? Their real identities aren't know, but according to He, they're healthy now. "I will apologize only if the children have any health issues," the scientist said. "So far, I don't need to apologize to anyone." More on genetics: 23andMe Is Crumbling, and That Means Your Genetic Data Is Blowing in the Breeze
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Says Ethics Are "Holding Back" Scientific Progress
It's been nearly three years since controversial Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison for gene-hacking human babies — and now, he appears to be hitting back at the rules that led to his punishment. In a cryptic post on X that featured a photo of the scientist blankly staring directly into the camera, He wrote that "ethics is holding back scientific innovation and progress." Though he doesn't mention it directly, that post seems like a clear reference to the ethical standards that made his 2018 gene-hacking experiments — which saw him using CRISPR to edit the DNA of twin girls pseudonymously known as "Lulu" and "Nana" in an attempt to make them immune to HIV — the source of global public outcry. After He announced that he'd created the world's first so-called "CRISPR babies" and that they'd been born seemingly without defect, the experiments were widely denounced as unethical to the point of abomination. In 2019, the scientist was arrested in China and sentenced to three years in prison — and just 18 months after his release in April 2022, He was back in the lab working on how to use genetic editing to fight Alzheimer's. Despite his return to the lab, however, it appears per a string of English-language missives posted on X that the notorious Chinese scientist has a chip on his shoulder about the stigma he accrued for his gene-hacking experiments. "Gene editing technology has the power to reshape the world," He wrote in a November post, "like [the] nuclear bomb." "Great revolution begins with controversy," the scientist declared in another. Alongside his vague proclamations of grandeur, He also came down hard on the use of biological weapons, paid lip service to the potential for universal access to genetic editing regardless of income, and even claimed in one post from December that "gene editing should not be conducted in countries with lax regulation in ethics." Taken together, these statements paint the portrait of a self-righteous scientist who, like so many of his Western counterparts, seems to believe despite all evidence to the contrary that he has been "canceled" for going against the grain. The reality, of course, is that He clearly feels hemmed in by the ethical rules that he was punished for ignoring the first time around — and wants to be able to do his problematic work in peace. More on strange science: Weird New Computer Runs AI on Captive Human Brain Cells
