The idea of “editing” babies seems like a sci-fi miracle that would never be replicated in real life. Jiankui HE, the scientist who edited a set of twin’s genomes to be immune to HIV, was probably not blind to the idea that was he was doing is not ethical. HE probably continued with his experiment in hope of praise and further scientific advancements outweighing the ethical concerns of how the experiment was performed. When the information first surfaced, the media praised HE for his new, innovative experiment. HE also claimed he had carried out the experiment to protect the twins from HIV later in life and felt the fact that people volunteered to participate in the research counted as their consent.
As far as “punishment” for HE, the Chinese and international committees regulating the ethical nature of experiments and finding disproved HE’s research, thus legitimizing all his other research. I do not think anything should have been done to HE physically, because “an eye for an eye” is not a legitimate way to punish scientific research. Since the incident, China’s ethical governance system has become more developed and no longer relies on self-regulating techniques, but still lacks integrity in regulation.
HE’s experiment compares to past experiments in the nature of its ethical concerns. Some characteristics of non-ethical research include, “questionable scientific value, unreasonable risk-benefit ratio, illegitimate ethics review, invalid informed consent, and regulatory misconduct.” Other experiments, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment specifically, exhibit all these qualities. HE’s experiment differs from previous experiments in the fact that the participants where altered even before birth and even conception.
Unethical scientific and medical research, such as HE’s experiment, results in distrust from the general public towards the scientific community. This distrust ultimately results in the general public not following recommendations from the scientific community, even if the topic of recommendations has nothing to do with unethical experiments. An example would be the lack of trust from the general public towards the scientific community in global pandemics such as COVID-19.
Li, J. (2019). Experiments that led to the first gene-edited babies: the ethical failings and the urgent need for better governance. J Zhejiang Univ Sci B. 20(1): 32-38. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331330
Normile, D. (2018). CRISPR bombshell: Chinese researcher claims to have created gene-edited twins. Science mag. Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/crispr-bombshell-chinese-researcher-claims-have-created-gene-edited-twins