Under public pressure, He Jiankui, an associate professor at Southern University of Science, was arrested for gene-editing babies the year before. But this is far from the whole story of the Chinese Communist Party’s human genetic modification program. A few days ago, an insider posted a photo of a speech by the chairman of Huada Genetics showing his ambition to “customize human beings”. UW Genetics urgently “dispelled” the rumors through the mainland media.
On Dec. 8, a report claiming to be “Wang Deming, director of the Jiangsu Operation Center of the National Gene Bank” was posted on Sina Weibo, accusing UW Genetics of engaging in human gene editing and carrying out evil plans such as “customizing human beings” and “artificial life”.
The tipster posted a number of photos of a speech given by Wang Jian, chairman of UW Genetics, on May 20, 2018, and said that Zhang Jinghua, secretary of the CPC Nanjing Municipal Committee, and a number of other officials were present.
According to earlier reports in the land media, on May 20, 2018, the CPC Nanjing Municipal Government and Jiangbei New District signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Shenzhen Huada Gene Technology Co., Ltd. respectively, with Zhang Jinghua, secretary of the municipal party committee, and Wang Jian, chairman of Huada Gene, attending the event and witnessing the signing.
The exposed photos of the scene show that Wang Jian’s speech subheadings include “What does UW do: gene editing, modifying embryos, modifying fate?” The UW’s speech included the following subheads: “What does UW do: existence is infinite possibility”, “genes can be read, written and immortalized”, “writing the world’s writable chapter of artificial life is in front of us”, etc.
During the speech, Wang showed the participants pictures, including the Nature paper on UW’s participation in gene editing of 58 human embryos, human cloning, artificial bacteria, and also pictures with the words “synthetic genetic artificial life” and “perfect human body”.
The source also said that Wang Jian mentioned in his speech the plan to “customize human beings” and “artificial synthetic life”, and also claimed that he would “combine the eggs of Lin Zhiling with the sperm of a mayor” and “collect the genetic data of national leaders for research”, which is “unethical” and “unconscionable”.
The reporter also posted the deletion records of several microblogs, questioning why He Jiankui was sentenced to jail for gene editing babies, while the information about Huada Genetics doing the same thing was deleted as soon as it was published.
The above-mentioned explosive post was once hotly circulated in mainland social media, but has now been deleted. The mainland internet is now flooded with UWM’s “disinformation” statement, which has been reproduced on the website of the Chinese Communist Party’s CCTV. The statement said that there is no “Gene Bank Cell Center Jiangsu Operation Center” and that UW only edited human embryos, “no baby was born”, but avoided mentioning the rest of the rumors.
However, many Chinese netizens believe in the rule that “the more official rumors are disproved, the truer they are” and have questioned UW’s statement.
In 2018, He Jiankui shocked the international academic community when he claimed at a Hong Kong academic conference that he had created a pair of so-called “AIDS-immune” twin babies through gene editing. The Chinese Communist Party delayed for a long time before bringing He Jiankui to justice after public opinion at home and abroad unanimously condemned him.
However, there are questions that He Jiankui’s case is not an isolated case in China. The Chinese Communist Party has always had the ambition to be “number one in science and technology,” and regulation of controversial topics such as gene editing is virtually non-existent, with many foreign scientists going to China to conduct related experiments in order to avoid legal regulation in their own countries.
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