HollyBrown
China: The court of Nansha City, Guangdong, sentenced He Jiankui, a gene repair scientist, to three years in prison and a 3 million yuan (430,000 USD) fine.
Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou, He's accomplices, also received prison sentences and fines but at a lower level. Zhang Renli was sentenced to 2 years in prison and fined one million yuan (US $ 143,000). Qin Jinzhou received a sentence of 18 months in prison and a fine of 500,000 yuan (US $ 71,500).
He Jiankui claimed to have successfully edited the gene at a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018 Photo: AP.
"The three defendants do not have a valid medical practice certificate. In order to gain fame and money, they violated state regulations on scientific research and medical treatment," the court said today.
He used to be an associate professor at Shenzhen University of Science and Technology. During a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, He admitted to using CRISPR-Cas9 genetic modification technology to create a pair of female twins that are immune to HIV / AIDS.
His research was strongly condemned by the Chinese community and the world. Under pressure from public opinion, the Chinese government immediately suspended all He research activities and opened an investigation.
He and his colleagues faked ethical assessments and recruited people with HIV / AIDS to study genetic modification. According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, his experiments have engineered genes for three babies.
