贺建奎说“我一切都很好! 也在反思, 没有自由受限”

原创： GlobalMD 中美精准医学 今天

             2019, Jan 9th, CRISPR babies’ scientist, He Jiankui said: ‘I’m actually doing quite well.’

1月9日，媒体STAT最新报道(参见原文) ‘基因编辑科学家’贺建奎副教授在和国际业界同事交流时说 “实际上，我一切都好、很正常，没有人身自由受限，更不像谣传所说面临被判死刑”。

目前，贺建奎仍居住在南科大家属宿舍，可以自由出入，去健身房锻炼，去校园散步，妻子也能自由出入购物，生活没有任何受限。。。

在这段闲暇时间里，贺也在反思所做的基因编辑试验和结果——诞生了基因编辑双胞胎婴儿璐璐和娜娜。目前，她们非常健康地成长。

时至今日，国际同行并没有因此而一边倒反对贺建奎所做的基因编辑研究和临床应用尝试。但是，争议焦点仍聚焦在选择什么人类疾病或目前无法医治的遗传基因疾病，比如Huntington’s 病或Tay-Sachs病(两种罕见基因遗传病)。

国内同行的观点认为贺建奎违反了有关伦理原则，比如，2003年政府颁布的“胚胎干细胞研究伦理指南”(Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research)。

但是，贺建奎认为该“指南”具体规定的是“禁止克隆人”研究领域或内容，并不涉及他所做的基因编辑胚胎细胞领域，况且，他所做的与试管婴儿IVF研究没有什么不一样。

部分国际业界同行也持有与贺相似的观点。认为选择基因CCR5编辑预防HIV病毒感染并不“出格”。目前还没有可靠的方法预防艾滋病病毒传染，提高个人“天生的免疫力”也是一种选择。

当然，大多数业界同行也指出贺在开展受孕胚胎基因编辑之前，应当做更多、更慎重的动物模型实验来验证，以确保万无一失！

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CRISPR babies’ scientist: ‘I’m actually doing quite well’

the following article by Sharon Begley

The Chinese scientist who shocked the world in Nov. by announcing that twin girls had been born from embryos that he had created using genome editing has told two Western colleagues that, contrary to a flurry of reports that he is under house arrest and possibly even facing the death penalty, he is “actually doing quite well here.”

In an email & a phone conversation, He Jiankui told the two scientists, who attended the “CRISPR babies” announcement at the International Summit on Human Genome Editing in HK, that he is able to read Western news reports about himself, including some earlier this week that he might be facing the death penalty for his work and that he is under armed guard and house arrest.

In fact, He told Stanford University neuroscientist and bioethicist Dr. William Hurlbut, he is staying in a university apartment in the city of Shenzhen “by mutual agreement” but is free to leave the apartment: He visits the gym in the building and takes walks outside, and his wife comes and goes for grocery runs and other errands.

“I didn’t pick up any anxiety from JK about what’s going on,” said Hurlbut, using He’s nickname. “ He didn’t convey to me that he finds the guards a constraining force at all, but instead feels they are protecting him.” He, Hurlbut said, has received a small number of hostile, even threatening emails about his experiment and is therefore concerned about “venturing out and being vulnerable.”

Hurlbut said He has expressed second thoughts on whether the CCR5 gene was an appropriate target for the first genome-edited embryos to be born. 

Some mutations to that gene protect against infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Many, but far from all, scientists argue that embryo editingis justified only if it addresses a severe medical need, such as repairing genes that cause devastating, incurable inherited disorders including Huntington’s or Tay-Sachs, not a disease that is preventable and treatable by simpler means, such as HIV/AIDS.

He is being investigated by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology for possible violations of laws prohibiting certain experiments on human embryos. 

It is not clear whether the country’s “Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research,” passed in 2003, apply to He’s experiment, which used CRISPR-Cas9 in human IVF embryos to alter a gene to protect against HIV infection. 

The guidelines prohibit reproductive cloning, but the two girls born from the edited embryos are simply test-tube babies, though with genomes altered before they were implanted in their mother’s uterus.

He has told Hurlbut and others that he was aware of the guidelines and does not believe they apply to his experiment.

Colleagues who have spoken to He said they hear his two young children in the background, and that the fencing on the apartment’s balcony — which some news reports said were meant to keep He from fleeing — are simply the usual precautions that parents who have toddlers (He’s oldest is 2 1/2) and live on upper stories take.

He spends his days reading, communicating with colleagues, and thinking about the bombshell he dropped on the world, including defending himself against some of the specific scientific criticisms of the experiment, say those who have heard from him.

Email He Jiankui sent on Tuesday to Robin Lovell-Badge.

He told Robin Lovell-Badge of London’s Francis Crick Institute, a summit organizer and one of the scientists who questioned He onstage after his summit presentation, that contrary to the charge that people with an HIV-protecting mutation like the one he tried to make in the embryos are more vulnerable to influenza, research on that has been ambiguous.

He also responded to criticism that the changes he made in the CCR5 gene created nothing like the HIV-protective form naturally found in some people of European descent. A different mutation, found in a small fraction of Chinese and Japanese, also protects against HIV, he told Lovell-Badge, suggesting that the chaotic edits he made in the embryos that developed into the girls He calls “Lulu” and “Nana” might also be protective.

Many CRISPR experts have criticized He for not determining the effects of those edits before creating pregnancies, such as by testing the DNA changes in lab animals.