Back in 2019, Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui proudly announced to the world that he had created two genetically edited human babies, fully expecting a round of applause and three cheers of “Hip Hip Hooray.” Instead, everyone booed him and he got thrown in prison for three years.
He’s since been released from prison, though it doesn’t seem like he’s learned any lessons from his stint in the clink. This was demonstrated by a post on Twitter/X wherein he accompanied a soulless picture of himself in a tweet in which he says that “ethics is holding back scientific innovation and progress.”
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Now, you might recognize that is the kind of thing a villain says before he splices into your DNA, unforeseen consequences be damned. Jiankui used CRISPR gene-editing technology to edit the DNA of a set of twins codenamed “Nana” and “Lulu” to make them immune to HIV. Sounds like a noble goal, until you find out that fiddling with those genes to make the girls immune to HIV could cause them to develop cancer while still not protecting from HIV.
Once out of prison, Jiankui went straight back into the lab in 2022 and immediately got to work on more gene editing projects, this time to try to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease. He believed gene editing could be just as revolutionary as nuclear technology was in the early 20th century.
He advocates for universal access to technology regardless of income, though people who usually call for that kind of thing with tools this powerful never seem to get that things don’t work out that way. Should gene editing become popular across the world, it will likely only be used by the rich to create genetically superior rich people.
Remember, insulin is not nearly as powerful a tool for shaping the world in your weird image as gene editing, and yet even after the inventor of insulin took his name off the patent because he felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that could save lives, insulin is still obscenely expensive.
Idealism doesn’t often gel with reality.
