I feel like Chinese researcher He Jiankui went through this experiment because he was very passionate about it. He told a NPR, which is a magazine, that he knew his work was contentious but was sure it would help families. Jiankui believed that this type of technology would help families, so he was willing to take the fall and criticism for his work. Jiankui modified a gene with the intention of protecting the girls against HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS. His whole goal was to introduce a rare, natural genetic variation that makes it more difficult for HIV to infect its favorite target, white blood cells. I feel like as if Jiankui was aware of the side effects and backlash of this medical experiment but still wanted to pursue it because he was sure it will help families. Jiankui was sentenced to three years in prison for illegally creating the world's first gene-edited babies. I feel like Jiankui and his team didn't do full research before they pursued this experiment. Maybe Jiankui and his team didn't follow up all the risks and complications that could go wrong with this experiment. or maybe they felt as if the complications and risk wouldn't be that bad and the good outweigh the bad. As a scientists and more importantly a researcher, it is extremely important to keep the safety of the people you are experimenting with safe. I personally feel like they didn't care about the safety of the people that they was experimenting with. If there were any risks, deaths or even complications that occurred with gene edited babies then I feel like either Jiankui, his team, or anybody who was involved should take care of the medical bills, funerals, and anything else that the families may have collected while experiencing this trauma. This situation is compared to another unethical science cases being the Henrietta Lacks study. Henrietta Lacks was originally being treated at John Hopkins Hospital for cervical cancer, but the doctors started using some cancer cells for research due to their unique ability to continuously grow and divide in the laboratory. These were called “immortal” cells were later named “HeLa”. Her cells made a vital tool in biomedical research, which lead to the understanding the fundamentals of human health and diseases.
Kennedy, M. (2018). Chinese Researcher Who Created Gene-Edited Babies Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison. Science mag. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/12/30/792340177/chinese-researcher-who-created-gene-edited-babies-sentenced-to-3-years-in-prison,
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