Hastings Center News

Hastings Responds to Prison Sentence for Rogue Gene-Editing Researcher

Hastings Center scholars explained the implications of the prison sentence for He Jiankui, the rogue Chinese scientist who created the world’s first gene-edited babies. “If He Jiankui had been a U.S. scientist, his alleged misleading of research participants and forging an ethics approval would have been considered unethical, and he would likely have been subject to sanctions from his employer,” wrote Hastings Center director of research Josephine Johnston in Stat News. Read the commentary. Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon tweeted that “in addition to holding individual renegades accountable, we should also integrate ethics education into the PhD preparation of all life science & bioengineering doctoral students.” And Hastings Center Fellow Renzong Qiu and another a Chinese bioethicist broke the news in Hastings Bioethics Forum that China is drafting a law to address the ethical issues raised by heritable genome editing. “We believe that the public has the right to know more” than has been reported in China, they wrote. Read the essay.