After arrest, ‘Dr. China’s Frankenstein’ thinks time is on his side now

BEIJING — For creating the world’s first genetically edited babies, He Jiankui came to be treated as the Chinese “Dr. Frankenstein.” He was sentenced in China to three years in prison, accused of deceiving medical authorities.

But as China accelerates its ambitions to become a biotechnology superpower, the discredited researcher, now 41, has not been silenced or pushed into obscurity. Instead, he lives and speaks openly at his home in a government-backed research hub north of Beijing, boasting about his work and insisting that his country is ready to accept him again.

He can’t travel abroad because his passport has been seized, but he has become a small but vocal figure on the Chinese biotechnology scene — neither silenced nor fully rehabilitated. The question is: why?

— For a country that dominates censorship and control, they are leaving it curiously free — says Benjamin Hurlbut, an associate professor in the department of life sciences at the University of Arizona, who has known He for years.

In an interview in his spacious apartment — provided, along with a security guard, by a financial sponsor he declined to identify — the Chinese scientist said there is a growing demand for researchers like him, willing to push boundaries.

He said he was recently offered a position at a government-funded medical academy in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese city neighboring Hong Kong, where he worked until his arrest in 2019.

His 2018 experiment, in which he edited embryos and gave birth to twins — and later a third baby from another couple — caused worldwide outrage, as very little is still known about the safety and long-term effects of genetic alteration in embryos. The case also opened what many saw as a Pandora’s box toward “custom babies” or eugenics.

But unlike Silicon Valley billionaires looking for ways to make smarter babies, He — who claims his experiment was aimed at creating HIV-resistant babies — insists his work is just about preventing disease.

— If someone uses this to increase IQ, put the scientist in jail — he says.

He says he has resumed his research into gene editing at a laboratory in Beijing, focusing on ways to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease, from which his mother suffers, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an inherited neuromuscular disease. He adds that he is only experimenting with mice, not humans.

He shows no regrets about his past work, saying he was simply ahead of his time.

— People weren’t yet ready to accept what I was doing.

According to him, this is changing. As an example, he cited an opinion poll from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, which showed broad public support in China for gene editing to prevent diseases — although not to increase IQ — as well as new Chinese government regulations on research into “new biomedical technologies.”

He believes China’s drive to become a world leader in science and technology means it is only a matter of time before it is recognized as a pioneer of gene editing, at least within the country.

He’s work with human embryos, using the technique known as CRISPR-Cas9, wasn’t technically very difficult, Hurlbut said. But the decision to implant them in women to make babies turned him into a “center of gravity for major moral and geopolitical issues that came to orbit around him.”

Although he is private about his current affiliations, He talks openly about how Chinese biotechnology is advancing faster than that of the United States, which he sees as overly tied to ethics committees, finicky regulators and fear of the unknown.

— Chinese gene editing will dominate the world, just as Chinese electric vehicles have already done — he predicts.

According to him, the flood of accusations from American scientists that their work in Shenzhen violated medical ethics shows why the United States will lose space to China in biomedicine.

The air of mystery surrounding He extends to his personal life. In early 2024, he married Cathy Tie, a Chinese-Canadian biotechnology entrepreneur, but the couple separated after she was denied entry into China in May.

Tie, who runs a startup called Manhattan Genomics — which says it works on developing “safe and ethical gene correction therapies” — shares He’s view on China’s potential to lead the future of this technology.

She says the United States still has the advantage, but adds:

— China has historically executed frontier technologies very quickly, especially in medicine. They benefit from less regulation.

She declined to comment on why she was barred from entering China or to explain a cryptic message she posted on social media site X about the intense scrutiny she says the industry faces:

—China thinks I’m a CIA spy and the US thinks I’m a Chinese Communist Party spy.

China’s main leader, Xi Jinping, has set a goal of global leadership in science and technology by 2049, the centenary of the Communist Party’s seizure of power. The government is investing heavily to become a leader in what it calls “genetic manipulation technology.”

In a 2019 speech to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi decreed that “we must not let bureaucracy tie the hands and feet of scientists, nor allow endless reports and approvals to slow down the energy of scientists.”

New regulations issued in September by the State Council, China’s cabinet, prohibit modifying DNA in human reproductive cells, such as sperm, eggs or embryos — exactly the type of research He carried out before his arrest in Shenzhen.

However, they also appear to leave room for this type of work, stating that the State Council’s health department will oversee all research that “manipulates human reproductive cells, zygotes or embryos and implants them in the human body to enable their development.”

He said the new rules are “ambiguous” about whether they would allow the creation of a gene-edited baby in the future, but they still represent “a sign that China is opening up in this field.”

Another possible sign of this is that Chinese scientists who, in 2019, signed an open letter denouncing He’s work now remain silent. Messages sent by The New York Times to 20 of the signatories, asking if they stood by their criticism, received no response.

Hurlbut says China’s scientific ambitions may explain why He is “not being treated like an ex-convict” and is free to express his optimistic views.

He says he is “very proud” to have raised “healthy, beautiful babies” in Shenzhen — twin girls, who he calls Lulu and Nana, and a third girl, Amy — for two couples. In all cases, the father was HIV positive.

The girls’ current whereabouts are kept secret, and their health status has not been independently verified.

— I’m not going to put them in a cage for people to collect their blood and dissect them, says He. — They are human, so don’t treat them like rats.

At least some influential forces within the Chinese establishment were already sympathetic to his work in November 2018, when news of the first genetically edited babies became public. The , the official newspaper of the Communist Party, published an article describing the birth of the twins from an embryo genetically altered by He using CRISPR.

The newspaper celebrated the birth as “a historic breakthrough for China in applying gene editing technology to disease prevention.”

The People’s Daily quickly deleted the article, published on the eve of an international conference on genome editing in Hong Kong, when attendees at the event reacted with fury to the revelation of what He had done.

The commotion at the conference led some to call him China’s Dr. Frankenstein. He said the nickname was unfair because, unlike the fictional scientist and the creature he created, he “never killed anyone” and just “made parents very happy.”

Although initially irritated by the nickname, today he embraces it. For a period of time, he even used it in the biography of his profile on the social network X.

— Now I like the name, because it shows that “I have a superpower” — he says.