In 2018, a nervous-looking He Jiankui took the stage at a scientific conference in Hong Kong. A hush settled over the packed auditorium as the soft-spoken Chinese scientist adjusted his microphone and confirmed the circulating media reports: He had created the world’s first gene-edited babies.
Three little girls were born with modifications to their genomes that were intended to protect them against HIV. The changes he’d made to their DNA were permanent and heritable, meaning they could be passed down to future generations.
A Chinese court sent him to prison for three years, and the Chinese government banned genome editing for reproductive purposes. Now He is trying to reestablish himself as a man out to change history.
Since his release in 2022, He says, he’s worked on a gene therapy for boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He has yet to publish or share any results publicly, but he claims that a pharmaceutical company has taken on his Duchenne research and that funders are eager to help him continue his work. And He, who has set up an independent lab in south Beijing, recently started talking again about human embryo editing—this time to prevent Alzheimer’s. With germline editing prohibited in nearly every country including the United States, his path forward is unclear.
Through it all, He has documented his life on social media. He has posted about his failed romance with self-styled “biotech Barbie” Cathy Tie, a Canadian former Thiel fellow and cofounder of a human embryo editing startup. A condition of this interview was that WIRED refer to He as a “pioneer of gene editing,” but he has more colorfully referred to himself on X as “Chinese Darwin,” “Oppenheimer in China,” and “China’s Frankenstein.”
He often posts photos of himself in a crisp lab coat, posing alone near scientific equipment. One glaringly empty lab shot comes with the text “I did not violate ethics, I overturned it.” More recently he dropped the austere look and posted an image of himself seated on a giant throne with prehistoric animals at his feet, a rainbow beaming down on his crown, and a double helix adorning his purple robe.
WIRED spoke with He about designer babies—the ones already born and the ones he hopes to eventually produce. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Emily Mullin: Back in 2018 the scientific consensus was that gene editing was not a mature technology. Do you think it’s mature now?
He Jiankui: Anyone who is the first in the world, no one can say it’s mature. The Wright brothers who made the first flight, was it mature? Of course not, but they made history.
I’m lucky that Lulu, Nana, and the third girl were healthy; they’re normal. We have observed them for seven, eight years now. So I think it’s time to move on to hundreds of gene-edited babies. We should give a trial to maybe 300 now.
Do you keep in touch with the parents of the three babies?
Yes, we have regular contact.
And everything seems fine?
Yeah, they go to primary school. Their family is very happy with it.
Have their parents told them that they were gene-edited?
No.
What is your new lab focusing on?
The new lab is germline gene editing—embryo gene editing—and it is focusing on trying to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
What genes are you working on?
The APP-A673T mutation. This mutation was identified in the population in Iceland. People with this mutation are free of Alzheimer’s and even live longer. They’re healthy and normal. So we want to introduce the mutation to the next generation, so they will have the same mutation as Icelandic people and be free of Alzheimer’s.
Are you currently working with human embryos?