CRISPR Scientists Slam Methods Used on Gene-Edited Babies

Since He Jiankui presented his results at last week’s gene editing summit, researchers have raised concerns about his protocol, calling the procedure “amateurish” and “unconscionable.”

Written byKatarina Zimmer

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In a move that has sparked outrage from scientists around the globe, researcher He Jiankui claimed to have used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to modify the DNA of twin girls born earlier last month. On top of the ethical concerns of tweaking human germline DNA, as well as the lack of transparency, oversight, and medical justifications for the procedure, a number of CRISPR experts have also raised concerns about the methodology of the experiment, which He presented at last week’s international summit on human genome editing.

“It’s very amateurish,” finds Gaétan Burgio, a geneticist at Australian National University whose research focuses on CRISPR-Cas9 and who watched the presentation via webcast. “Technically, it’s just really, really terrible. . . . It took me quite some time to calm down after I saw this.”

The motivation behind the experiment, as He explained in his YouTube video, was to ...

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Meet the Author

Katarina Zimmer
After a year teaching an algorithm to differentiate between the echolocation calls of different bat species, Katarina decided she was simply too greedy to focus on one field of science and wanted to write about all of them. Following an internship with The Scientist in 2017, she’s been happily freelancing for a number of publications, covering everything from climate change to oncology. Katarina is a news correspondent for The Scientist and contributes occasional features to the magazine. Find her on Twitter @katarinazimmer and read her work on her website.
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