The outcast gene-editor

Once reviled as a Dr. Frankenstein, China is betting on He Jiankui in the race for global biotech dominance

- ANDREW HIGGINS

He Jiankui, the DNA scientist, at his home in Beijing, China.

(NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE / THE GLOBE AND MAIL)

For creating the world's first genetically edited babies, He Jiankui has been reviled as the Chinese Dr. Frankenstein.

He was sent to prison for three years, convicted in China on charges of deceiving medical authorities.

But as China ramps up ambitions to become a biotechnology superpower, the disgraced researcher, 41, has not been muzzled or pushed into obscurity. Instead, he is living and speaking openly at his home in a government-backed research hub north of Beijing, boasting about his work and insisting his country is ready to embrace him.

He can't travel abroad because his passport has been seized, but he has become a small, but outspoken figure in China's biotech landscape, neither silenced nor fully rehabilitated. The question is why.

"For a country that is adept at censorship and control, they are leaving him curiously unfettered," said Benjamin Hurlbut, an associate professor in the University of Arizona's life sciences department, who has known He for years.

"In a period of increasing tension between China and the West, at a time when China really is making significant progress in technology," he added, He is "not seen as a liability, but is apparently seen as a potential asset".

In an interview at his cavernous apartment, provided, along with a bodyguard, by a financial sponsor he declined to name, the Chinese scientist said there was a growing demand for researchers like him who are willing to push boundaries.

He said he had recently been offered a post by a government-funded medical academy in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese city next to Hong Kong where he worked until his arrest in 2019.