If the new is proven, it would be a scientific first. This Monday, on the eve of the opening of the international Summit of the edition of the human genome in Hong Kong, the american scholar He Jankui, who worked in China at the university of science and technology of Shenzhen, announced the birth “a few weeks” of two babies from embryos genetically modified. The father was hiv-positive, the researchers would have introduced it in their genes to a “vaccine gene against the HIV.
Nicknamed Lulu and Nana, it is about two twins who, according to the video posted by the scientist on his YouTube channel, do well, and are already returned to their homes.
A promising technique
He Jankui tells in his video that he has used with his team at the technical editing genetic CRISPR-Cas9. This technique, discovered by the teams of the French Emmanuelle Charpentier, and the American Jennifer Doudna, used to cut DNA at a specific location of the genome, and to correct it.
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The researchers have then used the mutation of a gene to a rare and “protector of the HIV” to introduce it into the DNA of the embryos. It is the mutation of the gene CCR5, which affects 0.3% of the world population, and which has inherited the famous “patient in Berlin, Timothy Brown, during a bone marrow transplant. This man is the only one to have been completely cured of HIV and has, since 2007, no trace of the virus in the body.
The researchers conducted according to He Jankui this operation “when Lulu and Nana were still a single cell.” Before re-implant the embryo into the uterus of the mother, they have verified that the modification had in fact taken place in sequencing the whole genome. “The results indicated that the intervention was well conducted, as we had hoped,” says He Jankui. The scientists repeated the sequencing after birth, and claim to have found that no gene was not altered outside of the modified artificially.
“Defensible nor morally nor ethically”
The scientific feat, however, raises question about ethics. In effect, the modification of the gene is not included in a logical therapeutic, but only preventive. All the more that the mutation may be transmitted to the offspring of Lulu and Nana and alter other genes. In France, this type of experience is prohibited by the Oviedo convention.
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To Dr. Kiran Musunuru, expert editing of genes at the University of Pennsylvania interviewed by the Washington Post, this experience was “unacceptable”. In his opinion it is an “experiment on human beings that is not defensible nor morally nor ethically.”
“These parents do not want children, but just children who do not suffer from a disease that medicine can not prevent,” says his side He Jankui. “I understand that my work may be controversial, but I believe that families need this technology, and I’m ready to take on the critics in their place,” he continued.
A method controversial
the proclamation of The results on YouTube is also problematic, insofar as there is no official publication has been made in the scientific press. The study, therefore, has not undergone the process called “peer review” where other scientists must confirm the results. Nicholas Evans, assistant professor of philosophy at the university of Massachusetts Lowell, who is working on bioethical questions, described the practice as “very problematic”.
“to Make such assertions, so it seems deliberately seek to cause maximum controversy […] is irresponsible,” said from his side, Dr. Sarah Chan, the university of Edinburgh, in the Science Media Centre.
In the absence of a scientific publication, this feat’s self-proclaimed has not yet been independently verified. He Jankui ensures, however, that six other couples in which one member is hiv-positive are willing Betasus to participate in this experiment.