Stanford is investigating Stephen Quake’s interactions with He Jiankui, the scientist who performed the controversial experiment.
PALO ALTO, Calif. — “Success!” read the subject line of the email. The text, in imperfect English, began: “Good News! The women is pregnant, the genome editing success!”
The sender was He Jiankui, an ambitious, young Chinese scientist. The recipient was his former academic adviser, Stephen Quake, a star Stanford bioengineer and inventor.
“Wow, that’s quite an achievement!” Dr. Quake wrote back. “Hopefully she will carry to term…”
Months later, the world learned the outcome of that pregnancy: twins born from genetically engineered embryos, the first gene-altered babies. Reaction was fierce. Many scientists and ethicists condemned the experiment as unethical and unsafe, fearing that it could inspire rogue or frivolous attempts to create permanent genetic changes using unproven and unregulated methods.
Source: Gene-Edited Babies: What a Chinese Scientist Told an American Mentor – The New York Times