![]() ![]() And although people with natural deficiencies in the gene appear healthy, they might be more susceptible to West Nile virus, and more likely to die when they catch influenza. Read: You may already be immune to CRISPRĭeactivating CCR5 doesn’t confer complete immunity to HIV, either, since some strains of the virus can enter cells via a different protein. The rationale for using a method as extreme and untested as gene editing doesn’t hold up. Even if you wanted to block CCR5 specifically, there are drugs out there that could do the job, many of which have been repeatedly tested in clinical trials. As I’ve written before, He’s team deactivated a perfectly normal gene in an attempt to reduce the risk of a disease that neither child had-and one that can be controlled through safe-sex education or antiviral drugs. Although Nana and Lulu’s father is HIV-positive, neither of the infants actually had HIV. To lock the virus out, several scientists have tried extracting the immune cells of HIV patients and deactivating CCR5 using gene-editing techniques before injecting the cells back into the body. He focused on a gene called CCR5, which the HIV virus uses as a doorway for infiltrating human cells. If you wanted to create the worst possible scenario for introducing the first gene-edited babies into the world, it is difficult to imagine how you could improve on this 15-part farce.ġ. Even without any speculation about designer babies and Gattaca-like futures that may or may not come to pass, the details about what has already transpired are galling enough. Such a strong reaction is understandable, given the many puzzling and worrying details about the experiment. The CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna says she was “ horrified,” NIH Director Francis Collins said the experiment was “ profoundly disturbing,” and even Julian Savulescu, an ethicist who has described gene-editing research as “ a moral necessity,” described He’s work as “monstrous.” Nonetheless, the reaction was swift and negative. It is still unclear if He did what he claims to have done. ![]() After his talk, He revealed that another early pregnancy is under way. Antonio Regalado broke the story for MIT Technology Review, and He himself described the experiment at an international gene-editing summit in Hong Kong. But on November 25, the young Chinese researcher became the center of a global firestorm when it emerged that he had allegedly made the first CRISPR-edited babies, twin girls named Lulu and Nana. "Your activities here detract from that trust.Before last week, few people had heard the name He Jiankui. ![]() "An element of trust must necessarily exist in research including that carried out in disadvantaged countries," he writes. … Papers can still be rejected at this stage if inconsistencies are not clarified to the satisfaction of the journal." Lader argues that this sting has a broader, detrimental effect as well. He notes, however, that acceptance would not have guaranteed publication: "The publishers requested payment because the second phase, the technical editing, is detailed and expensive. "I take full responsibility for the fact that this spoof paper slipped through the editing process," writes Editor-in-Chief Malcolm Lader, a professor of psychopharmacology at King's College London and a fellow of the Royal Society of Psychiatrists, in an e-mail. Without asking for any changes to the paper's scientific content, the journal sent an acceptance letter and an invoice for $3100. The Sage publication that accepted my bogus paper is the Journal of International Medical Research. In 2012, Sage was named the Independent Publishers Guild Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year. When a paper is submitted, he writes in an e-mail, "We believe that your article is original and your supplied information is correct." The American Journal of Medical and Dental Sciences did not respond to e-mails. The editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Chemistry, Hakan Arslan, a professor of chemistry at Mersin University in Turkey, does not see this as a failure of peer review but rather a breakdown in trust. But the locations revealed by IP addresses and bank invoices are continents away: Those two journals are published from Pakistan and Turkey, respectively, and both accepted the paper. They create journals with names like the American Journal of Medical and Dental Sciences or the European Journal of Chemistry to imitate-and in some cases, literally clone-those of Western academic publishers. Most of the publishing operations cloak their true geographic location. A striking picture emerges from the global distribution of open-access publishers, editors, and bank accounts.
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