this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 66 points 1 day ago (21 children)

Is nobody concerned that illegal experiments on babies only gets you 3 years?

Maybe they were Uyghurs so it was classified as "property damage" in Chinese law.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The devil is in the details....

You are likely thinking (as I am) that he implanted robotic arms on babies but he may have just rubbed sage oil on them for all we know

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

He used CRISPR to make babies immune to HIV.

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

No, he inserted a gene that is associated with resistance to HIV, but is also associated with increased risk of some cancers. He did this without informed consent, he did this without running it by an ethics board, he did this without knowing whether it would work or not.

Let’s stop pretending that he’s a good guy that just magically made HIV immune babies.

Edit: it also didn’t work. The babies have genes both with and without the mutation.

[–] T156@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

We also don't know if it was just that gene that was altered, or if there are other effects. Modern gene editing isn't so precise that we can edit just the gene we want. A lot of genes with similar sequences as the target can also be affected.

It's basically like firing a shotgun at the house they live in. You might hit the one you want, but you may also hit other unrelated genes in the process.

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[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 day ago (12 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair

Laws were changed after this incident:

In 2020, the National People's Congress of China passed Civil Code and an amendment to Criminal Law that prohibit human gene editing and cloning with no exceptions

So, in case you actually meant that weird ignorant remark you made about Uyghurs, the answer is no and no.

[–] ghost_of_faso3@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh shit someone tell the ~~fascist scum~~ liberal toads that its actually blue on blue, this guy was working for a honky kong universty!!!

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 day ago

Lemmitors downvoting you because actually learning about the case conflicts with their "cHiNa BaD" circlejerk.

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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (12 children)

Be careful, you might get banned from lemmy dot ml for hatespeech against dictatorships.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 7 points 23 hours ago

It's literal misinformation, so it probably should be removed, yes.

[–] ghost_of_faso3@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 day ago

Hong kongs a dictatorship? You know, the place this doctor was working?

Well observed, its been an apartheid state since its inception as a colony to the UK.

[–] Probius@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why did you self censor by saying "dot"?

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

I wrote that on my phone's touch keyboard, and I didn't want to use \. to escape the dot character to avoid autohotlinking.

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee -4 points 21 hours ago

I've blocked that instance, but if they need more material to ban me I have it.

[–] Aux@feddit.uk -4 points 22 hours ago

Who cares about a tankie instance?

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[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

Depends how successful the experiment is (and probably on what the goal is as well).

If he'd been testing the effects of grass vs grain feed on human fat marbling, I'd imagine the sentence would have been a little more severe

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