Gene-Edited Babies in China Reveal Regime’s Attitude Toward Life
December 19, 2018 Updated: December 19, 2018
News Analysis
To much fanfare, in late November a top Chinese scientist announced the creation of the first genetically edited babies. Since then, the scientist has disappeared, a TV program celebrating his feat has been taken offline, and his home institutions have disavowed him.
The Chinese regime appears to have only suddenly discovered that what it considers to be a great success was widely rejected by international scientists. Behind this misunderstanding lies a more fundamental difference: how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views human life, in comparison to the rest of the world.
On Nov. 25, two days before the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, biophysics researcher He Jiankui announced his triumph in several professionally produced youtube videos. In these videos, He triumphantly claimed that “two beautiful little Chinese girls, Lulu and Nana, came crying into this world as healthy as any other babies a few weeks ago.”
On Nov. 26, the People’s Daily, the CCP’s official publication, published a report about Lulu and Nana headlined “The World’s First Gene-Edited Babies Immune to HIV Created in China.”
With pride, the report celebrated Lulu and Nana’s creation as “a historic breakthrough in China applying gene editing technology in the disease prevention domain.”
He’s current whereabouts are unknown. Some media reports say that he is missing, while his former employer released a statement denying that he had been detained.
An Angry Response from the World
Perhaps neither He nor the editors of the People’s Daily had expected that what awaited them were not congratulations, but instead a global outcry from mainstream scientific and medical communities. Even 122 Chinese biomedical researchers posted a strongly worded statement onlinecondemning He’s claims.
Scientists condemned He’s experiment as “illegal,” “unethical,” “unacceptable,” and “reckless.”
Chinese scientist He Jiankui speaks at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong on Nov. 28, 2018. (Song Bilong/The Epoch Times)
Leaving aside moral objections to tinkering with what a human being is, the technology is ethically charged because changes to an embryo would be inherited by future generations and could eventually affect the entire gene pool.
The genetic editing of a speck-size human embryo also carries significant risks, including the risks of introducing unwanted mutations or yielding a baby whose body is composed of some edited and some unedited cells.
Jennifer Doudna, a co-inventor of the CRISPR gene-editing tool, which He used to edit the babies’ genes, questioned He’s motive, “I think we still need to understand the motivation for the study and what the process was for informed consent.”
A Lone Wolf, or a Party-Supported Enterprise?
The Southern University of Science and Technology, which He worked for, was quick to cut ties with him, stating that He had been on unpaid leave since February 2018; his research was conducted outside of their campus; and the university and He’s department said that they were unaware of the research project, and so on.
Shenzhen Hemei Women and Children’s Hospital, where the gene-edited babies Lulu and Nana were born, also denied any involvement with He’s experiment.
However, some China experts are highly skeptical about these institutions sudden protestations of ignorance or non-involvement.
He Jiankui(R) working at the lab of Direct Genomics (archive photo/The Epoch Times)
Wen Zhao, a Chinese commentator, said on his youtube show that according to the materials He submitted to the Chinese clinical trials registry, the date He was granted permission to conduct his experiment by the Ethical Committee of Shenzhen Hemei Women and Children’s Hospital was March 7, 2017.
At that time He was still working for the Southern University of Science and Technology, even if the university’s claim that He had been on unpaid leave from February 2018 was true.
The image of He’s “Ethical Review Application Form,” visible on several Chinese websites, shows an official stamp of Shenzhen Hemei Women and Children’s Hospital and signatures of 7 Ethics Committee members. The review concludes, “The experiment complies with ethical standards and permission was granted from this committee.”
According to He’s materials submitted to the Chinese clinical trials registry, his project was funded by Shenzhen Municipal Science and Technology Innovation Council, which has since denied He’s claim.
Wen Zhao was very skeptical about Shenzhen Municipal Science and Technology Innovation Council’s denial, too, saying that unless He could print cash at home, there was no possibility that he could carry out such a huge project without gaining funding from somewhere.
According to a commentator who identifies himself as a former science professor of a university in Shanghai, who now teaches in a university in Taiwan, and who gave himself the alias Cao Ji on Twitter, the gene-edited baby project was driven by high-level CCP leaders, entrusted to the Southern University of Science and Technology, and executed by He’s team.
Cao argues that He’s project involves hundreds of millions of yuan. Such a huge amount of money cannot be just granted to an associate professor, and must have the backing of high-level government departments.
Cao also observes that He is an elite biologist who was recruited back to the Southern University of Science and Technology from the United States via the “Thousand Talents Plan,” which usually involves much higher salaries and research funding levels for its scientists than are awarded to locally trained peers. It is therefore impossible that He could gain long-term unpaid leave from the university to conduct his gene-editing project, without support from high-level authorities.
Moreover, He’s experiment, Cao said, involves dozens of candidates screened and selected from over 200 people. Each couple that eventually participated in the actual experiment could gain a compensation of 280,000 yuan (U.S. $40,630) from the Southern University of Science and Technology.
Six companies are in his name and he owns shares in two others, according to Cao, and each has investment from the Southern University of Science and Technology. One of He’s company, Direct Genomics, has successfully raised 218 million yuan (US$31.6 million) through its Series A financing and is on its way to becoming a listed company.
According to Cao, all of the above are impossible in a tightly controlled society like China without high-level state support.
A China Central Television Star
On Sept. 23, 2018, in a special program prepared to “Happily Celebrate the 19th Communist Party of China National Congress,” and produced by China Central Television(CCTV), He was featured as “a rising big gun in global genetics research.” In this program He boasted about the achievements he had made with his third generation DNA sequencer.
The camera followed him to many different places including his lab, his company, a hospital, and even the soccer field, portraying He as an awesome, promising and much loved science star.
Notably, after the “unexpected” outrage from the world regarding He’s experiment, this program was taken down from CCTV’s website, but an archived copy was made available on youtube on a channel called “Walled Video.”
The Communist View of Human Life
He’s expectation about the response of international scientists toward his “historic breakthrough” turned out to be very different from the reality, or else he would not have released his youtube videos. How is such a misunderstanding possible?
Wang Zhiyuan, formerly a chief physician for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, a former histology research specialist at the Harvard Medical School, as well as the president of the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, said he was not surprised by He’s “unique” perspective about his own experiment.
In Communist China, the dignity of human life is not respected, Wang said, while medical ethics have been ruthlessly trampled.
Dr. Wang Zhiyuan, president, World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, speaks at a forum on Capitol Hill in Washington, on May 26, 2016. (Gary Feuerberg/ Epoch Times)
“For example, Wang Lijun, the former chief of the Public Security Bureau of Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, and Deputy Mayor of Jinzhou City, founded the On-Site Psychology Research Center of the Public Security Bureau of Jinzhou City, and conducted experiments on thousands of live human beings, possibly Falun Gong practitioners, to study the psychological process during their deaths, ” Wang said.
“Wang Lijun and his On-Site Psychology Research Center had actually received a research grant of 2 million yuan (U.S. $300,000) to conduct his ‘Research on Organ Transplantation from Donors Who Have Been Subjected to Drug Injection.’ The ‘drug’ here actually means execution by lethal injection.”
Wang Lijun also invented a patented high-tech product called the “Primary Brain Stem Injury Impact Apparatus,” which was used to “establish a simulation of a traumatic brain injury caused by a sudden impact.”
In the Korean documentary “Killing to Live: The dark side of transplant tourism in China,” this machine was called a “sinister” “Brain Death Machine.” The film reports it is still being used in a military hospital.
The “Brain Death Machine,” according to the documentary, was used to cause brain death while keeping other organs undamaged, which is an optimal condition for organ transplantation.
Wang Lijun, inventor of the Brain Death Machine, in March, 2011. (Feng Li/Getty Images)
Wang Lijun’s patent application paper says that the subjects for the experiments were all male, age 26-38, and the experiments were conducted on 12 corpse’s heads.
“One cannot help asking: how can they prove whether the machine works or not if the experiments were conducted on corpse heads? I seriously doubt they were not done on living human beings, just as their thousands of other experiments,” Wang said. “And mostly importantly, why would they need such a machine?”
A New York Times article in June 2016 reported that Dr. Ren Xiaoping of Harbin Medical University was planning a full body transplant.
The report said, “Dr. Ren has experimented with head transplants on mice, but they have lived only for a day. He said he had also begun practicing on human cadavers, but declined to give details.”
Wang said he also seriously suspected that live human beings had been used to do these experiments, otherwise how could they know if the human brain would work with another person’s body?
Radio Free Asia reported that He Jiankui’s team said to the parents who were in the experiment that if anything went wrong in the process, they would “deal with” the “faulty” babies.
“Am I surprised by He’s crazy action? Not at all, as the Chinese Communist Party’s nature is exactly like this. There is nothing they won’t do,” Wang said.
According to an article in the mainland China participatory news website Mingjing News by Cheng Huiyong, more than 20 percent of the Chinese netizens who participated in online discussions about He’s gene-edited babies thought that He’s research had great value and should not be criticized or condemned.
Some even claimed that gene technology should be used in China to create smarter, healthier, longer living, more powerful and more beautiful human beings, to bring about hyper fast development in the economy, science and technology, so that China can surpass all other peoples in the world in every field.
Some also believe, Mingjing reported, that if naturally born human beings are replaced by better, gene-edited humans, that will be progress made by human beings, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Shenzhen City, a Coincidence?
In October this year, the Epoch Times reported about the content of a leaked internal Chinese government document, a 12-page proposal, titled “An Undeclared War: The Change of the Landscape of the World Will be Faster and More Dramatic Than We Have Expected.”
A screen shot of the leaked internal document personally signed by Wu Sikang, the director of Development and Research Center of Shenzhen City , and addressed to Wang Weizhong, the Communist Party Secretary of Shenzhen City, with Wang Weizhong’s comments and instruction asking other city leaders to read this file. (Screenshot/Policy Research Office of Shenzhen People’s Government)
The document was drafted by Wu Sikang, the director of the Development and Research Center of Shenzhen City, on Sept. 29, and urged the provincial government to understand the Trump administration would quickly tighten the U.S. ability to prevent the stealing of American technology, changing the basis for China’s economic growth. Wu sought to counsel how to deal with this new situation.
The fifth of its many recommendations is to “seize opportunities brought about by the differences between the legal and institutional systems of China and the United States and to expedite the development of new types of industries and businesses.”
“The development of new technology, in areas such as biomedical, is closely related to regulations and rules. We can designate special zones as experimental areas, and adopt special policies in these areas to support, serve, and regulate these industries to expedite the development of new technology and new types of businesses,” the document says.
Commenting on the leaked document back in October, economic analyst Qin Peng told the Epoch Times that while the Chinese Communist regime position in the leaked file doesn’t differ from its long-standing policy of stealing and gaining by all means possible, he was particularly struck by the fifth recommendation.
Qin said the mention of differences between the legal and institutional systems of the United States and China, in connection with biomedical products, could mean that the Communist regime is ready to use the Chinese people for medical testing that isn’t allowed by U.S. laws and regulations.
When news about He Jiankui’s gene-edited babies broke out, Qin immediately realized that He and his team are based in Shenzhen City, where the leaked document was drafted and perhaps had its recommendations adopted.
And surely enough, Qin said, while He’s experiment would have been prohibited in the United States and much of Europe, he could have free rein in a city whose authorities actually view “the differences between the legal and institutional systems of China and the United States” as its competitive advantage.
Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/gene-edited-babies-in-china-reveal-regimes-attitude-toward-life_2743889.html
