CRISPR Baby Scandal – All You Need To Know

Voice of Biotecnika – Episode No: 38

Hello everyone and welcome once again to our weekly podcast channel – Voice of Biotecnika. Today we will talk about the controversial – CRISPR baby scandal.

It all started when a Chinese researcher claimed that he had used the gene-editing technique CRISPR–Cas9 to modify human embryos in order to make them HIV resistant and after implanting them into a woman, have made the first CRISPR-edited babies, twin girls named Lulu and Nana. Those two became the first human beings born with genetic modifications that were directed by human beings. It provoked an international outcry; it is like a bombshell revelation.

And it just gets worse by the day. It seems that there were a lot of technical errors and ethical blunders in this alleged creation of the world’s first gene-edited infants.

You may have heard about him in my other podcast on CRISPR’s potential uses, where I had mentioned him to be using the CRISPR/Cas9 system to modify the genes of twin girls so that they are born with a deletion in the CCR5 gene, thus conferring resistance to HIV infection.

Yes, We are talking about He Jiankui. He became the center of a global firestorm on November 25th, 2018, when he made this fact known to the world.

Listen to the podcast above to know more.