He Jiankui refused to answer researchers’ questions about his controversial 2018 experiments at weekend event.
by Smriti Mallapaty – Nature.com
He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist who shocked the world with experiments that led to the first children with edited genomes, says research must accept moral and ethical constraints, but is otherwise refusing to speak about the work that sent him to jail for three years. His silence is frustrating some scientists, who say that he should answer questions about his past research before publicizing his latest plans to use genome-editing technology on people.
On Saturday, He spoke at a virtual and in-person bioethics event, hosted by the University of Kent in Cantebury, UK, that was promoted as “the first time that Dr. He has agreed to interact with Chinese bioethicists and other CRISPR scientists in a public event”. But during the talk, He did not discuss his past work and refused to answer questions from the audience, responding instead that questions should be sent to him by e-mail.