Are “designer babies” here?

It sounds like the plot of a bad science-fiction movie: a renegade scientist violates global moral standards to engineer a new breed of humans. But that’s what has happened, if a Chinese scientist is to be believed.

He Jiankui, a researcher with a PhD from Rice University and postdoctoral training at Stanford, announced this week that he has created the world’s first genetically edited babies. The twin girls were born this month.

However, Dr. He did not publish his research in any journal or share any evidence or data to prove his claims. He spoke today at the Human Genome Editing Summit in Hong Kong, where he announced another “potential pregnancy” involved in his study. He said he felt “proud” of his work in the face of nearly universal condemnation.

“I think that’s completely insane”

Dr. He states that the father of the twins has HIV. As a result, Dr. He used a genetic editing technique known as CRISPR/Cas-9 to disable the embryos’ CCR5 gene to make them resistant to HIV infection.

However, there are other ways to produce embryos from HIV-infected men without altering their genes. An HIV expert said that about half of HIV strains don’t need the gene Dr. He edited to infect patients, meaning the immunity he tried to confer is not complete. A gene-editing expert warned that people without normal CCR5 genes face higher risks of getting certain other viruses such as West Nile and of dying from the flu.

Many scientists are appalled by this announcement. “I think that’s completely insane,” said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at Oregon Health and Science University.

“Modifying human embryos at this stage in our understanding of biology is clearly unethical,” said Christopher Anderson, a bioengineering professor at UC Berkeley. “We do not yet understand the full biological consequences of these actions even in small animals.”

A group of 122 Chinese scientists called Dr. He’s actions “crazy” and described…