Unreported death in Chinese gene‑editing trial revealed
What a harrowing story and an incredible work of #scicomm in the reporting. 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...
Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them)111"Hey Jess, why do you spend so much of the classroom time of your genetics course talking about ethics?"
B in the land of rain and coffee76I am a molecular biologist, I study DNA in tiny tubes and cells in dishes. This story had me in tears. There is so much to unpack. Parents thinking disability is worse than death for their child. Scientists failing to examine risks. Terrible study design. Journals failing to catch issues.
CosmicRami 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️5"harrowing" is the perfect adjective to describe the emotions one feels reading this.
Stefan Tiron2"Neuroscientist Zilong Qiu, speaking here in 2015 at a science fiction convention, was confident in the safety of a gene-editing treatment he developed, but it led to a death that was not made public."
“Seven days after the girl’s medical team infused trillions of viruses carrying the recipe for the base editor into her spinal fluid, she died of a severe immune reaction linked to the therapy…” This, in @science.org, is an important and tragic story. (It’s also an incredibly well reported one.) 🧪
Craig Kaplan6That heartbreaking death and several extremely disturbing revelations about how these studies proceeded and what appear to be questionable and unethical practices are detailed here. 2/ bsky.app/profile/kaka...
rhetoric hashira4So Nature editors aren't actually doing any critical reviews of the studies they publish???! This story is HARROWING.
Craig Kaplan3I am incandescently angry after reading this.
"The girl was slipping behind her peers in kindergarten. She still spoke in simple sentences and ate with training chopsticks. Underneath it all was a single mutated DNA base, a T that should have been a C."
Ben Eltham12This is a dark story
