It could be expected that the CRIPS / CAS9 method of modifying the genomes of living species by removing certain genes and introducing others from other locations in the genome or even other genomes would be quickly used by some researchers to modify human genomes, despite the many banned.
But modifying a human genetic sequence in a test tube is one thing. Introducing the modification into embryos intended to give birth to genetically modified humans is another. Yet this is what the Chinese geneticist He Jiankui has just bragged about. He is an associate professor at the Shenzhen Southern University of Science and Technology.
He is now known worldwide as the “father” of two siblings with artificially modified genes in sight, he says, to protect them from HIV infection. He said he had modified the CCR5 gene of these girls by the CRIPS method. The CCR5 protein is recognized as the main receptor in the human body of the HIV virus that causes an acquired immune deficiency syndrome called AIDS, universally feared. It is a weakened state of the immune system making it vulnerable to opportunistic infections, often fatal if not treated at great expense.
This announcement sparked a wave of indignation and criticism worldwide, including in China. The experience has been denounced as unethical and academic morality. More than 100 bioscientists around the world have signed an open letter denouncing the immorality of He Jiankui. It was recalled that genetic modification experiments on the human embryo are only accepted by the scientific community if the embryo concerned lives only 14 days, after which it is destroyed.
The announcement of He Jiankui, who refused to participate in the second International Human Genome Summit in Hong Kong where he was to present blood from the umbilical cord of the twins, was followed by the promise that he would give news of the health of the binoculars-guinea pigs for at least 18 years. This is obviously not serious.
The so-called National Health Commission of China immediately decided to conduct a survey in the provinces of Shenzhen and Guangdon. In both provinces, the University Ethics Committees immediately stated that they had not given any authorization to He Jiankui’s experience. However this turned out to be partly wrong. A medical center in Shenzhen had given the go-ahead to He’s experience.
He Jiankui did not act on his own initiative
One wondered very quickly who had interest, if the university authorities had not done it, to encourage the experiment of He Jiankui, and especially to finance the non negligible costs which it had led. Several Chinese investigative journals have investigated. They got some disturbing answers. Thus, according to the Chinese paper The Paper , He, apart from his scientific activity, owned shares in the capital of seven companies for a total of $ 22 million. In addition he was the legal representative of six of them to whom he also provided a scientific guarantee.
The first of these is Direct Genomics, created in 2012, which claimed to have produced a 3rd generation genetic sequencer. She admitted to having paid He a stake in its capital. Another company, the Shenzhen Nanke Life Technology Co. Ltd., of which he also held shares, appointed He director of its scientific council.
It also appears that he still had links with the American Stanford University, where he had studied. The American science journal MIT Technology Review acknowledged that he had heard of announcements made by He in the press to recruit couples to participate in genetic modification experiments on their future embryos.
What to conclude?
Everyone will draw from this information the conclusions that will suit him. For our part, we believe that nothing in the near or distant future will prevent the emergence of genetically modified humans. This perspective is presented in the foresight books, as aimed at producing what we begin to call post-humans. The genetic modifications they will benefit will allow these post-humans to fit into a world that has become largely synthetic thanks to the generalization of the current dazzling advances in Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Robotics.
The promoters of these changes officially assign them objectives allowing the increased human to conquer new spaces, for example in the deserts, at the bottom of the seas or on nearby planets. But most, without saying it openly, are already trying to produce hardened fighters to lead the wars of the future.
In other words, it is not excluded that in other laboratories, not only in China, are experiments like He, but more discreetly.
