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Chinese Scientist Ostracized Over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback

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WSJ

Mar 27, 2025 11:14 AM IST

He Jiankui stands by a controversial research approach that landed him in prison as he aims to tackle Alzheimer’s disease.

He Jiankui is treated with skepticism by many in the scientific community.

Chinese scientist He Jiankui set off global outrage and landed in prison after he skirted ethical guidelines and claimed he had produced genetically modified babies designed to resist HIV infection.

Chinese Scientist Ostracized Over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback PREMIUM

Chinese Scientist Ostracized Over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback

Now, the self-styled gene-editing pioneer is trying to stage a comeback with another controversial project, aiming to use gene-editing to prevent Alzheimer’s disease in future generations.

One monumental hurdle: gaining the trust of a scientific community that treats him as a pariah.

International media has dubbed him “China’s Frankenstein.” He has no academic affiliations. He declines to reveal where his funding comes from or who his backers are. It isn’t helping that he won’t repudiate his controversial approach. On March 11, He posted on X that “Ethics is holding back scientific innovation and progress.”

At his Beijing home in a gated compound, a relaxed He outlined his plans for a scientific comeback. He can’t travel—he said China won’t renew his passport—but hopes to send two Chinese colleagues to the U.S. to conduct research on mice and monkeys for the Alzheimer’s project. After that, he hopes to conduct human trials, and he has identified South Africa as a place where that might be possible.

Gene-editing embryos to implant in wombs isn’t condoned by any country; scientists and ethicists say the practice raises concerns on many fronts, including unknown risks to future generations. But updated ethical guidelines issued by South Africa’s National Department of Health in May 2024 included a new section on such research, saying it “holds significant potential.” Some scientists have called on South Africa to revise the guidelines, fearing it might be moving toward embracing the controversial technique.

The South African health department didn’t respond to requests for comments.

It couldn’t be learned what, if any, U.S. contacts are still retained by He, who studied and conducted research in Texas and California.

On the wall of He’s apartment hung an oil painting depicting him talking to James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA’s double-helix structure. He said he met the Nobel laureate, who caused controversy with 2007 comments about race as a basis for genetic differences in intelligence, at a 2017 forum. “Make people better,” He recalls Watson telling him.

Duncan Watson, the geneticist’s son, wrote in an email that his father, who turns 97 in April, no longer gives interviews.

Beijing’s attitude

He’s attempt to return to research has raised fresh concerns in the scientific community and left questions about Beijing’s attitude toward him.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is pushing to make China a global science leader, and China’s biotech industry has soared in the years since He’s initial genome-editing efforts.

He’s research back then was initially celebrated in China by state media. In November 2018, one month after twin sisters were born from embryos He said he genetically modified, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said, “The world’s first gene-edited baby immune to AIDS…means that China has achieved a historic breakthrough in the field of disease prevention using gene-editing technology.”

The article was removed from the newspaper’s website soon after a backlash against He from the scientific community. Later that month, He sprang another surprise at a scientific conference in Hong Kong, announcing a second woman was pregnant with a gene-edited baby.

He was convicted in 2019 of illegally practicing medicine related to his gene editing and sentenced to three years in prison.

Doubts also arose about the quality of the research. Fyodor Urnov, a genome-editing scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in MIT Technology Review in 2019 that He’s team misrepresented the data and failed to support his claims to have made the children immune to HIV. “The statement that embryo editing will help millions is equal parts delusional and outrageous,” Urnov wrote. Urnov said his stance remained the same but declined to comment further.

After the scandal, Beijing toughened ethical guidelines and regulations on gene-editing. Since 2021, Chinese law has prohibited implanting modified embryos in humans.

A dozen prominent Chinese scientists and legal scholars issued a statement in 2023 condemning He’s “irresponsible attitude of refusing self-reflection” and “misleading remarks on rare-disease research.”

The three girls born with their genes altered by He are now school-age and all healthy, according to He. Their identities aren’t publicly known. “I will apologize only if the children have any health issues,” he said. “So far, I don’t need to apologize to anyone.”

He says he receives no funding from the government but that officials are aware of his research plans. He declined The Wall Street Journal’s request to visit a lab he has set up in Beijing, saying the Ministry of Science and Technology recently told him that foreigners entering the lab needed government permission. He says he interpreted the edict as concern over espionage following Chinese company DeepSeek’s emergence as an artificial-intelligence powerhouse.

The Ministry of Science and Technology didn’t respond to requests for comment. The National Health Commission said in a faxed statement that any research trial involving humans must be registered with the commission, reiterating that human gene editing for pregnancy isn’t only prohibited but also irresponsible.

An aging population means Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise in China, where about 15 million people are living with dementia. He said his mother, who is in her late 60s, suffers from Alzheimer’s and no longer recognizes him.

He says his new research aims to mimic a genetic mutation found primarily in the Icelandic population responsible for making a protein that protects against Alzheimer’s. Researchers found the mutation is more common in Icelanders than in other populations.

Many scientists see his experiments as highly risky.

He Jiankui has a painting in his home that shows him with Nobel laureate James Watson; he says the two met in 2017.

A small error in an attempt to manipulate genes can create risks of introducing genetic changes that could be inherited for generations, said Kari Stefansson, an Icelandic geneticist and founder of deCODE Genetics, a Reykjavik-based biotech company that announced the discovery of the Icelandic mutation in a 2012 Nature article.

“There are so many other legitimate ways to try and make the lives of people better,” said Stefansson. “This one is very high on risk and the type of risk that I do not want to take.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved several new drugs in recent years that can help slow Alzheimer’s progression. In China, doctors have successfully improved the cognitive function of Alzheimer’s patients with a procedure that helps with brain lymphatic drainage, state media reported.

Some scientists have experimented with inserting the protective Icelandic mutation into mice, and Jacques Tremblay, a professor at Laval University in Quebec City, has patented the use of gene-editing tools to target certain genes that offer protection against Alzheimer’s disease.

Hopes for transparency

He’s secretiveness in his latest research is a concern, said Jeffrey Kahn, director of Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “Let’s hope there’s greater transparency as he goes forward,” he said.

In Beijing, He said his lawyer advised him not to share details of his Alzheimer’s project with the public because of the sensitivity of the topic. He says he would prefer not to carry out his research in secrecy. “What I want is to be a leader of gene editing for the whole world, so I have to be open and transparent,” he said.

He feels lonely for lack of engagement with other scientists but says, “I’ve come to the realization that my work is not to please my peers.”

He studied physics in China before moving to the U.S. to pursue a doctorate in biophysics at Rice University. That was followed by postdoctorate research in genome sequencing at Stanford University, where he learned Crispr, which acts like a molecular pair of scissors to cut and modify a DNA sequence.

The U.S. in 2023 approved the world’s first medicine employing Crispr technology to treat sickle-cell disease, but leading scientists have argued it shouldn’t be used for embryo editing.

Benjamin Hurlbut, a biomedical historian at Arizona State University who says he has known He since 2017, says that He’s research didn’t develop in a vacuum. Before He became a symbol of transgression, he consulted privately with almost two dozen Western scientists who knew about and even encouraged his work, Hurlbut said.

Hurlbut said some scientists were quietly excited that He was trying to break new ground. “There was a difference between what the scientists were saying publicly and what they were saying privately,” he said.

A business network He established involving half a dozen biotech companies in southern China crumbled following his sentencing, corporate records show. He says he plans to register a company soon and hopes that will help attract venture capital.

When asked whether he expected plaudits and backing from Beijing for research that could help in its goal of making China a force in genetic science, he declined to comment. He dismissed scientists’ concerns over his research as groundless.

“They are jealous of my achievement,” he said.

Write to Liyan Qi at Liyan.qi@wsj.com and Jonathan Cheng at Jonathan.Cheng@wsj.com

Chinese Scientist Ostracized Over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback

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