Chinese expert in bioethics slams mainland scientist He Jiankui who claims to have created the world’s first gene-edited children

A top mainland Chinese expert in bioethics has criticised the actions of a Chinese scientist who shocked the world by claiming to have created the world’s first gene-edited children, saying that it “was a practice with the least degree of ethical justifiability and acceptability”.

The comments, by Professor Qiu Renzong of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, came as He Jiankui, a scientist from Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, revealed on Monday that healthy twin sisters were born in China this month from embryos he and a team of researchers had modified to disable an HIV-related gene.

Speaking at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, which began on Tuesday at the University of Hong Kong, Qiu made heavy criticism of He, if news reports He had effected germ line genome modification for enhancement were true.

“This is a practice with the least degree of ethical justifiability and acceptability,” Qiu said.

The Shenzhen scientist is expected to speak about human embryo editing on the Wednesday session of the summit. His name still featured as one of the speakers on the conference programme distributed on Tuesday.

Qiu said it was highly difficult to assess the risk-benefit ratio in such modification work for improving one’s existing condition or for medical purposes, and added that such work should not be the priority of scientists.

He said that, as there currently existed a convenient and practical method to prevent HIV infection, using genome editing for preventive purposes was like “using a cannon to shoot a bird”.

He warned that editing genomes for prevention or enhancement would change the gene pool of the human species.