Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world with his recent claim that he modified the genes of two babies.However, his methods of achieving a medical breakthrough are consistent with China's culture of innovation at any cost.While many scientists follow Western standards of medicine and innovation, China may decide to go its own way ' threatening what we view as ethical.The world was shockedbyChinese scientist He Jiankui's recent claim that he'd brought to term twin babies whose genes ' inheritable by their own potential descendants ' he had modified as embryos. The genetic edit, He said, was meant to make the girls resistant to HIV infection.Scientists within China and across the world responded to the announcementwith a mixture ofincredulity and alarm.But as ahistorian of biologywho has closely followed biomedicine in China over the past few years, I was less surprised by these developments. Set within the context of China'sapproach to biomedical ethicsand its rampant global ambitions, He's actions fit into a wider pattern of dangerous excess.Since He did not publish any of his results in scientific journals there's no way of knowing yet whether his claims are true,falseor exaggerated in some way. But what seems the most surprising outside of China is that He believed ' gambled, perhaps ' that his announcement would be met with congratulations and acclaim.Didn't he know that he'd be condemned' Why take such a risk'Different history frames what's acceptableChina's relationship to biomedical ethics isvery different from that of the West.In the West, after-the-fact condemnation of Nazi medical experiments, theTuskegee syphilis experiment,and other patient abuses led to the rise ofInstitutional Review Boardsthat carefully regulate medical experimentation on humans.China has its own history of dubious medical research, including byJapanese scientists during World War II, but it didn't result in the development of similar kinds of home-grown bioethics institutions.Although many hospitals and universities in China do now have Institutional Review Boards, they'renot nearly as established' or consistent in their practices ' as those in the US and Europe.This does not excuse He's actions. After all, he was trained in the US and was surely aware of Western norms. But He's willingness to engage in undoubtedly risky and dangerous actions suggests that he was working in a very different ethical context.Apart from merely anabsence of compelling ethical oversight, the broader attitudes toward biomedical research in China are important in explaining He's announcement.In the West, the potential benefits of biomedicine and biotechnologies are oftenweighed against potential harms. In Europe and the US, many peopleview genetically modified foodswith caution and treatcloningandstem cellswith outright distrust.China came to biotech late in the game,scraping into the Human Genome Projectin the 1990s. Even so, both the Chinese state and Chinese scientists saw the field as an area in whichChina had a good chance of catching up to the West.As such, it gambled heavily and hasinvested much in biotechand biomedicine.Having followedone of China's most prominent biotech companiesfor years, I can attest that these fields are seen as critical to sustaining China's growing population: feeding people through agricultural technologies and keeping people healthy through new medicines and therapies.Read more:How the CRISPR babies experiment threatens China's military dreamsThe upshot of all this is that Chinese view biomedicine in dramatically positive terms. Advances in biomedicine can have analmost heroic status within China.He's claims about genetic modification fit this model. He has represented his use of genetic modification as a bold intervention to save the lives of twin girls and eliminate discrimination against HIV patients. He himself is (or at least was) somewhat of a heroic figure.He completed his PhD at Rice University and postdoctoral training at Stanford before being sponsored by the Chinese government to return to his homeland under the "Thousand Talents Plan," which aims to recruit top scientists back to Chinese universities.In 2018, he wasnominated for the China Youth Science and Technology Award. He was a rising star.Moving fast and breaking thingsIn 2012, back from the US, He Jiankui joinedSouthern University of Science and Technology, an institution set up in Shenzhen in 2011. This local setting is important too.Shenzhen, the city that sprang up from China's firstSpecial Economic Zone, was an experiment in China's reform and opening. Since 1980, Shenzhen has been azone of experimentation, a place of high risk and high reward. Both penniless farmers and entrepreneurs have gone there tomake their fortune.This has resulted in some great successes: Shenzhen is the home of Huawei, Tencent, BGI, BYD, and hundreds of otherthriving companies. But such experiments have also generated problems.The capitalist excesses that have come with reform and opening up ' doctored milk,fake vaccines,andgutter oil' are now well known. And Shenzhen is a place where such excesses ' particularlyviolations of intellectual property rules' have been particularly rampant.He's reckless experimentation looks like the result of such an attitude, as applied to biomedicine. It is not just scientific competition and a "drive to succeed," but arguably a wider atmosphere of success through excess. The release of aYouTube videoalongside He's announcement suggests that his actions are motivated by personal aggrandizement andfame- and fortune-seeking.Like those other scandals involving tainted products, He's genetic modification is yet another failure by the Chinese government to protect its vulnerable citizens ' in this case, unborn children ' from predatory individuals and companies.Read more:A medical diagnostics startup that wants to use CRISPR technology to detect diseases raised $23 million in venture fundingFrom an even broader perspective, such excesses might be seen as collateral damage from global competition and rapid development. In developing "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and in its reform and opening up, China has followed its own political path, often provingunwilling to follow international norms.And Shenzhen ' the world's capital of tech hardware development ' has found itsown models of innovationthat now rival Silicon Valley's. Catching up with ' and surpassing ' the West has motivated divergent, and sometimes ugly, actions. Take therecent scandal involving Huawei, for instance.China may decide to forge its own path in science, too, following trajectories that would not be possible in the West. For now, Heremains shunned within China. But if his reckless experiments do turn out to be a world first, Chinese scientists may embrace them ' and him.Science and public policy scholarCaroline Wagnerhas argued that He's actions willthreaten China's position in the global scientific orderby undermining the willingness of scientists elsewhere to collaborate with them: "A global system that works by reputation will shun those who do not play by the rules." But these rules are Western ones. And China may decide it can go its own way.Hallam Stevens is an Associate Professor of History at Nanyang Technological UniversityJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: I'm a diehard iPhone user who switched to Android for a week ' here's what I loved and hated about the Google Pixel 3 XL
Click here to read full news..
