by ANTONIO REGALADO
The attempt is another controversial test of whether gene-modified people are possible
Chinese fertility doctors have tried to make HIV-proof human embryos, but the experiments ended in a bust. The new report is the second time researchers in China revealed that they had a go at making genetically modified human embryos.
“It is foreseeable that a genetically modified human could be generated,” according to Yong Fan, a researcher at Guangzhou Medical University, who published the report.
His team collected more than 200 one-cell embryos and attempted to alter their DNA to install a gene that protects against HIV infection. The study, published two days ago in an obscure reproductive journal, was first spotted by reporters at Nature.
The scientists cautioned that they believe making actual genetically modified babies should be “strictly prohibited”—but perhaps only until the technology is perfected. “We believe that is necessary to keep developing and improving the technologies for precise genetic modification in humans,” Fan’s team said, since gene modification could “provide solutions for genetic diseases” and improve human health.
The Chinese scientists tried to make human embryos resistant to HIV by editing a gene called CCR5. It’s known that some people possess versions of this gene which makes them immune to the virus, which causes AIDS. The reason is they no longer make a protein that HIV needs to enter and hijack immune cells.
Doctors in Berlin demonstrated the effect after they gave a man sick from HIV a bone marrow transplant from a person with the protective gene mutation. The man—known since as the “Berlin patient”—was cured of HIV, too.
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