Unrepentant Chinese scientist He Jiankui apologises for sparking global controversy, but says he is proud of his achievement
- Speaking at international conference in Hong Kong, academic says couples who took part in experiment gave informed consent
- Scientist reveals second woman may be pregnant, but does not give details
The Chinese scientist who stunned the world by claiming to have created the first gene-edited babies finally faced his peers and the public on Wednesday, apologising for the storm he unleashed but defending his highly controversial experiment and expressing pride in his achievement.
After first dropping the bombshell in a video posted on the internet that he had engineered the birth of healthy twin girls through altered embryos to ensure they would not contract HIV, He Jiankui – who has been called China’s Frankenstein – went silent for two days. Then on Wednesday he revealed there had been another pregnancy involving a gene-edited baby.
“First, I must apologise that this result leaked unexpectedly, taking it away from the community before being presented immediately at a scientific venue and without the peer review process engaged before this conference,” He told a genome summit in Hong Kong that had become the focus of global attention.
Then he raised eyebrows even further with an additional claim: “There is another one … another potential pregnancy.”
He described it as a chemical pregnancy, suggesting there had been an early miscarriage, but did not provide details.
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The academic, from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, faced an onslaught of questions from the media and his peers, most of whom have raised doubts about his claims or condemned his brashness, given ethical and medical concerns about a clinical procedure that is banned in most countries, including China.
