In 2018, a scientist took to a stage in Hong Kong to announce that he had crossed the Rubicon: the birth of the first genetically modified babies in history. Today, after serving three years in prisonHe Jiankui is back. But he does not seek forgiveness. With financing of 50 million yuan (about 7 million euros) and an increasingly messianic aesthetic, the man nicknamed the “Chinese Frankenstein” plans to rewrite the code of life again. This time, with an even greater promise: eradicating Alzheimer’s.
“I know what it feels like to be God!” shouted Professor Frankenstein—played by Colin Clive—in the film Frankenstein (1931), forever establishing the myth of the scientist who crosses all limits. Upon his release in 2022, He Jiankui appears to have assumed that role without irony. In a recent interview with WIREDhe no longer presents himself as a reckless researcher who learned his lesson, but as a “pioneer of gene editing”, a term he demanded as a condition of being interviewed. On social networks, he is defined as the “Chinese Darwin” or the “Oppenheimer of China”and often posts photos in a pristine coat, posing alone in a lab.
Isolated from international academiaI have assured WIRED that investors “come to him every week.” He has established an independent laboratory in the south of Beijing and, although Chinese law expressly prohibits the genetic editing of embryos for reproductive purposes, he claims to operate within a gray area: “philanthropic” research, financed by private entrepreneurs and desperate patients.
What happened to the babies? The original 2018 experiment sought to make babies immune to HIV by modifying the gene CCR5. The result, according to geneticists and bioethicists, was a technical and ethical failure. The researcher Lluís Montoliu detailed in The Conversation that the girls born from that experiment are “genetic mosaics”: not all their cells were edited in the same way, and unwanted mutations were also detected —off-target— in other regions of its genome.
Despite this, He Jiankui maintains a defiant stance. As stated to the Wall Street Journalall three girls—including a third born in 2019—are healthy and attending primary school today. “I don’t have to apologize to anyone,” he said. However, experts warn that this statement rests on a huge information gap since the real impact of genetic alterations on your immune system, the long-term effects and the psychological consequences of growing up knowing – or one day discovering – that they were humanity’s first genetic experiment are unknown.
The new frontier: Alzheimer’s. He Jiankui’s new target is Alzheimer’s, a disease with a personal component: his mother no longer recognizes him due to this pathology. As explained to WIREDtheir plan is to introduce a genetic mutation into human embryos —APP-A673T— discovered in the Icelandic population, which appears to confer natural protection against cognitive decline.
The scientific consensus is devastating. Kari Stefansson, the Icelandic geneticist who participated in the identification of that mutation, warned in the Wall Street Journal that He’s approach is “very high risk.” Manipulating the genome of an embryo means that any error, no matter how small, will not only affect one individual, but will be transmitted to all future generations. There is no going back.
Still, far from moderating his ambition, He is already planning the next step. confessed in the interview that their ultimate goal is to make up to 12 simultaneous genetic modifications in a single embryo to prevent cancer, HIV and cardiovascular diseases. “The children born will be much healthier and may live longer than us,” he says. For many scientists, that phrase sums up the problem: a totalizing promise based on a still immature technology.
Science without borders. How does a scientist disqualified by his own country plan to execute this plan? The answer is a transnational structure that some experts describe as “guerilla science.” In China, He limits his work to human cell lines and experiments with mice and monkeys. In the United States, as revealed by South China Morning Postplans to operate – through his wife, businesswoman Cathy Tie – a laboratory in Austin (Texas), where private financing allows research with embryos discarded from in vitro fertilization. The final destination would be South Africa, a country that relaxed its ethical guidelines in 2024 and that, according to He, would be very interested in authorizing human trials.
The financing of this network is as ambitious as it is opaque. While the Wall Street Journal points out that He refuses to reveal the identity of his sponsors, the SCMP reports that even Alternative avenues have been explored such as cryptocurrencies promoted by their environment to raise funds.
The uncomfortable mirror of Silicon Valley. The most controversial part of He Jiankui’s speech is his frontal attack on the American technology elite. “Some Silicon Valley billionaires are pushing to improve IQ in babies. I think it’s a Nazi eugenic experiment,” stated in WIRED.
However, the border between what He does and what is already happening in California is increasingly blurred. Startups like Nucleus Genomics or Orchid Health they do not edit DNAbut they do allow embryos to be selected based on genetic scores associated with intelligence, obesity or risk of Alzheimer’s. The technical difference is real; The underlying logic—optimizing the human being before birth—is eerily similar.
While tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel invest billions in biotechnologies that promise to slow down or reverse aging, the human body has become in one more financial asset. He maintains that he edits to prevent disease, while Silicon Valley selects to optimize. For global ethics, both models raise the same fundamental question: who decides what “best” means?
Science versus myth. There is an essential point that is often lost among promises and figures: DNA is not a destiny. Genetic predictions about intelligence or success explain only 5% to 10% of the real variability between people. Additionally, there is a critical technical risk: Analyzing a few cells from an embryo requires amplifying its DNA, a process that can introduce errors and lead to decisions based on flawed data.
Behind the race for genetic modification there is also an emotional root. For example, in the fear of aging. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, once confessed: “Death has never made sense to me.” In this context, what is happening with He Jiankui is not an isolated anomaly, but the most extreme expression of a global trend in which the genome has become a new scientific, economic and ideological battlefield.
The dilemma. Today, He Jiankui walks through the golf courses on the outskirts of Beijing while waiting for his passport to be returned, convinced that he is the only one who dares to do what others only discuss at private dinners and luxury conferences. But there is an absence that runs through the entire debate: that of future children. They do not consent, they do not vote, they do not invest. They are the ones who will bear the risks of irreversible decisions made before birth.
Is He Jiankui a visionary willing to rid humanity of Alzheimer’s or a scientist whose ambition has surpassed any ethical limit? As it prepares to produce “hundreds of modified babies,” society faces an uncomfortable and urgent question: If we can shape the next generation like a spreadsheet, what will it then mean to be human? For now, the “Chinese Darwin” presses on, fueled by 50 million yuan and the unwavering conviction that, in the race for immortality, ethics is just an obstacle that can be overturned.
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