He Jiankui spent three years in prison after creating genetically modified babies. Now, having returned to scientific work, he believes there is more room for researchers to push the boundaries.
For creating the world's first genetically modified babies, He Jiankui was labeled as China's Dr. Frankenstein. He was sentenced to three years in prison in China for deceiving medical authorities.
But as China steps up its ambitions to become a biotech superpower, the 41-year-old scientist has not been silenced or pushed into oblivion. On the contrary, he lives and speaks publicly from his home in a state-backed research center north of Beijing, boasting about his work and claiming that his country is ready to embrace him.
He can't travel abroad because his passport has been confiscated, but he has become a small but vocal figure in China's biotech scene - neither fully rehabilitated nor silenced. The question is why.
“For a country that is very skilled at censorship and control, they are leaving him unusually free,” said Benjamin Hurlbut, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, who has known Dr. He for years.
"In a period of rising tensions between China and the West, at a time when China is making significant advances in technology," he added, Dr. He "is not seen as a burden, but is clearly seen as a potential asset."
In an interview in his spacious apartment, which, along with a bodyguard, was provided to him by a financial sponsor whose name he did not wish to reveal, the Chinese scientist said that there is a growing demand for researchers like him, who are willing to push the boundaries.
He said he was recently offered a position at a state medical academy in Shenzhen, a southern Chinese city near Hong Kong, where he worked until his arrest in 2019.
Dr. He's 2018 experiment, in which genetically modified embryos resulted in the birth of twins and later a third baby from a different couple, sparked outrage around the world, as little is known about the safety and long-term health consequences of gene editing in embryos. Many saw it as opening a Pandora's box on the road to "designer babies," or eugenics.
Unlike Silicon Valley billionaires looking for ways to create smarter children, Dr. He, who claims his experiment was aimed at creating babies resistant to HIV infection, insists his goal is solely to prevent the disease.
“If someone uses this to increase intelligence, the scientist should be sent to prison,” he said.
He said he has continued his gene-editing research at a lab in Beijing, focusing on ways to eliminate Alzheimer's disease, which his mother suffers from, as well as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an inherited neuromuscular disease. He added that he is experimenting exclusively on mice, not humans.
Dr He showed no remorse for his earlier work, claiming he was simply ahead of his time. "People weren't ready to accept what I was doing yet," he said.
That is now changing, he claims, citing a public opinion poll by Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou that shows strong support among Chinese citizens for genetic modification to prevent disease, but not to increase intelligence, as well as new Chinese government regulations governing research into “new biomedical technologies.”
He believes that China's aspiration to become a world leader in science and technology means that it is only a matter of time before it is celebrated as a pioneer of genetic editing, at least within the country.
Dr. He’s work on human embryos, using a technique known as CRISPR-Cas9, was not technically particularly complex, said Hurlbut of the University of Arizona. But the decision to implant the embryos into women and have babies made him “the center of gravity for the big moral and geopolitical questions that began to revolve around him.”
Although he doesn't want to talk about his current connections and patrons, Dr. He is happy to talk about how Chinese biotechnology is rapidly overtaking research in the United States, which, in his view, is hampered by ethics committees, finicky regulators and fear of the unknown.
“Chinese gene editing will take over the world, just as Chinese electric vehicles have already done,” he predicted.
Accusations by American scientists that his earlier work in Shenzhen grossly violated medical ethics, he added, show why the United States will lose the race in biomedicine.
The aura of mystery surrounding Dr. He also extends to his private life. In early 2024, he married Kathy Tai, a Chinese-Canadian biotech entrepreneur, but they soon separated after she was banned from entering China in May.
Tai runs the startup Manhattan Genomics, which claims to be working to develop “safe and ethical gene-correction therapies,” and shares Dr. He’s belief that China has the potential to lead the future of this technology.
She said the United States still has the advantage, but added that "China has historically demonstrated an extremely rapid application of technologies at the frontier of what is possible, particularly in medicine, and benefits from less regulation."
She refused to discuss the reasons for her ban on entering China, as well as to comment on a cryptic message she posted on X.com, in which she stated: “China thinks I’m a CIA agent, and the US thinks I’m a CCP agent.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping has set a goal of making China a global leader in science and technology by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party's rise to power. The government is investing heavily in developing what it calls "genetic engineering technologies."
In a speech to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019, Xi declared that “we must not allow bureaucracy to tie the hands and feet of scientists and endless reports and approvals to stifle their energy.”
New regulations issued by the State Council, China's government, in September prohibit the editing of DNA in human reproductive cells, such as sperm, eggs or embryos - precisely the kind of research Dr. He was conducting before his arrest in Shenzhen.
However, the regulations also leave room for such work, stating that a state health authority will oversee all research that “manipulates human reproductive cells, zygotes or embryos and implants them into the human body for development.”
Dr He said the new rules were unclear on whether the creation of genetically modified babies would be allowed in the future, but he saw them as "a sign that China is opening up in this area".
In another possible sign of a shift in attitude, Chinese scientists who signed an open letter condemning his work in 2019 have now largely gone silent. Messages sent by The New York Times to the 20 signatories asking whether they still stood by their earlier condemnation went unanswered.
Harlbat said China's scientific ambitions could explain why Dr. He is "not treated like an ex-con" and why he is allowed to freely express his enthusiastic views.
Dr He said he was very proud to have created "healthy, beautiful babies" in Shenzhen - twins he calls Lulu and Nana, as well as a third girl, Emi - for two sets of parents. In all three cases, the father was HIV-positive.
The girls' whereabouts are being kept secret, and their health has not been independently verified. "I will not put them in a cage and let people take their blood and dissect them. They are human beings, don't treat them like mice," said Dr. He.
That at least some influential circles in the Chinese establishment view his work favorably was clear as early as November 2018, when news broke of the birth of the first genetically modified babies. The People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published an article stating that twins had been born from embryos whose genes Dr. He had edited using CRISPR technology.
The newspaper declared their birth as “China’s historic breakthrough in applying gene editing technology to prevent disease.”
The text was quickly removed, published on the eve of an international conference on genome editing in Hong Kong, when conference participants reacted violently to the news of what Dr. He had done.
It was then that some people called him the Chinese Dr. Frankenstein. He said he considered the nickname unfair because, unlike the fictional scientist and his monster, he "never killed anyone" and only "made his parents happy."
Although he initially resented the nickname, he has now accepted it and for a time used it in the biography of his X network account.
"I like that name now because it shows that I have a superpower," he said.
Prepared by: SS
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