Chapter 196: Moratorium (1)

On the morning of the symposium, news outlets that were preparing an article about the attending participants were in a temporary state of shock after receiving some shocking news. It was that massive factories were being built on the eastern coastline of China, and that a huge amount of micro-dust from them was going to fly to Korea. Surprisingly, the source of this information was He Jiankui. He reported this to Korea news outlets himself along with an audio recording. It was a recording of him and Young-Joon’s conversation that had been deceitfully manipulated.

—...Damn it! Doctor Ryu, aren’t you the national hero of Korea? Are you going to hold your people’s lives hostage because of your company’s damages?

—There’s nothing I can do.

The audio recording basically sounded like HeJiankui warning Young-Joon about micro-dust and Young-Joon completely ignoring that.

[It is estimated that the amount of micro-dust in Korea after the construction of the factory zone will reach one thousand micrograms per cubic meter area. This is the same value as New Delhi, India.]

[The leading cause of death in India is air pollution, which causes respiratory and vascular diseases from micro-dust. In India’s population of 1.35 billion, seventy-six percent of people are exposed to severe air pollution, and 12.5 percent of total deaths in India are from complications resulting from air pollution. This means that one in eight people die from air pollution.]

[This seems like Korea’s future. According to EPIC’s analysis, the average lifespan of people living in India would have increased by ten years if New Delhi’s atmosphere satisfied the WHO’s safety standards.]

[Korea will have to come up with a solution about the air quality CEO Ryu Young-Joon abandoned because of his obsession over the lawsuit.]

The reporters sighed with worried looks on their faces as they read He Jiankui’s email. Everyone knew that A-GenBio was suing Atmox and He Jiankui as the symposium was coming up.

“What should we do about this, sir?”

The reporters of Jooshin Ilbo[1] asked the director.

“Hm...”

“It seems like the article itself is going to be very controversial, but we’re hesitant to write it because we’re targeting Doctor Ryu.”

“Try to be as positive as you can be about Doctor Ryu. Even if we don’t write this right now, other news outlets will. It’ll blow up eventually.”

* * *

The St. Regis Hotel in Beijing, where the symposium was held, was filled with people from the Public Security Bureau to prevent any accidents.

The best scientists in the world, who were considered experts in their fields, rushed into the conference room. They felt a serious responsibility to the moratorium, but at the same time, they were curious about how Young-Joon and He Jiankui’s conflict would play out. Even Jamie Anderson, a GSC member and one of the greatest experts in biology, was hit hard after going up against Young-Joon. They wondered how He Jiankui would end up; it made it even more interesting that it was happening in China, He Jiankui’s homeground.

The reporters, who had already entered the hotel after a strict bag inspection by the Public Security Bureau, crowded the hotel lobby and the conference room to take pictures of the attending scientists.

“It’s He Jiankui!” someone shouted.

He Jiankui walked in with a stern face. He glared at Young-Joon, who was sitting at the back of the conference room.

After some time, all the scientists took their seats. Young-Joon went up to the podium and grabbed the microphone as he was the presenter.

”Cas9, the genetic scissors developed by A-GenBio, is the most advanced technology among all existing genetic scissors. Cas9 can easily cut DNA unlike TALENs, which is more difficult,” Young-Joon said. “This allowed numerous scientists to easily jump into experiments using genetic scissors. In fact, several scientists around the world are using Cas9 in lots of DNA work, including cloning. Furthermore, as we all know, we discovered that the genetic modification of embryos using Cas9 was possible through Mimi, the very first genetically modified baby who was first reported at the GSC International Conference.”

The scientists nodded. Young-Joon held the microphone and stared at He Jiankui.

“However, the genetic modification of embryos is too early for us, and it must be limited to only be used for the elimination of genes that are inevitably linked to disease development,” Young-Joon said. “Following this, we are going to set up an ethics committee regarding the use of Cas9 and hire bioethics experts from all over the world. If anyone in the world tries to start embryonic research using Cas9, they must be evaluated by the ethics committee. If Cas9 is used in embryonic research without permission, A-GenBio will take legal action.”

Young-Joon was basically saying that they would file a ten billion-dollar lawsuit.

“But I don’t think this is enough. Regulations are just supportive programs, and the most important thing is for scientists to take serious responsibility for embryonic research. As such, I am here today, along with some of the best scientists in the world, to announce a moratorium to restrict ourselves from research on genetically modified embryos.”

The hotel employees at the symposium handed out a signature sheet for the moratorium declaration.

“I will explain the information in the document that was just handed out,” Young-Joon said.

The scientists slowly read the document while listening to Young-Joon explain it.

“First, the genetic modification of human embryos using Cas9 is prohibited in principle. For the next ten years, the research on the genetic modification of embryos must only be done with organisms except humans. Second, this research is permitted on a limited basis if the genetic modification of a human embryo is the only way to stop the development of a specific genetic disease. Third, if Cas9 is being used on human embryos, the scientist must be able to precisely pinpoint the disease-related gene among three billion base pairs, and they must be able to ensure Cas9 can cut the desired target without causing side effects at other locations. Lastly, there must be sufficient cellular-level experiments that demonstrate that the genetic modification works as expected, and they must prove that no side effects will exist after the modification with preclinical experiments.”

“Ha...”

They were pretty tight regulations. The scientists read the document carefully, and some took out a pen and began signing it. It wasn’t common for scientists to impose restrictions on their own research that could hinder their progress, but in biology, this happened from time to time. This time, it was Young-Joon who was enforcing the moratorium.

“What a waste,” someone said.

It was He Jiankui. He leaned back in his chair in an arrogant posture and crossed his legs.

“Why would you do something like this?”

He stood up.

“Look, people. Are you really going to voluntarily sign these papers and put limitations on yourself?” said He Jiankui. “We were given the responsibility of advancing human civilization. Do you know how much society pays to train a single PhD-level scientist? And what about GSC or professor-level scientists—gifted people like us?”

“You’re being stupid again. He Jinakui, this is all because of you!” Max Decani shouted.

“Because of me? No, it’s because of Doctor Ryu,” He Jiankui said as he pointed at Young-Joon. “My research was necessary, and it worked perfectly! The problem is that he made this into a problem.”

“It wasn’t necessary. You could have stopped HIV from being inherited if you used Glaxoviroc!”

“Glaxoviroc can fail.”

“That’s because of the dosage change. It wouldn’t have failed if you stuck to the original dosage at the original concentration. It has a lot of clinical data.”

“That is also a hypothesis. Conversely, the fact that the conventional use of Glaxoviroc doesn’t cause any side effects is also an assumption, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe since the drug doesn’t have decades of clinical data!”

“Well, it’s safer than genetic modification!”

“Safer than modification?! Stop talking nonsense! Delta-32 already exists in nature, so are all people with that mutation at risk?”

The atmosphere was tense between them.

“That’s not the point,” Young-Joon interrupted. “I think you can consider CCR5 modification as an alternative to Glaxoviroc. I partly agree with Doctor He Jiankui.”

“...”

The scientists looked shocked at Young-Joon’s unexpected reason.

But...” Young-Joon went on. “For that to happen, the details written in the paper I distributed right now had to have been kept. First, CCR5 manipulation cannot cause any side effects, and no other mutations must arise other than correcting the target location in the DNA. Doctor He Jiankui conducted this research without enough base research, so you violated both.

“What are you talking about?” He Jiankui asked.

“At the last press conference, I said I would talk about the DNA information of thirty-one million people and the Delta-32 valiant. This was the result of our GWAS analysis. Take a look.”

Young-Joon presented the data on the monitor. It was DNA data of thirty-one million people. They were divided into fifteen factors, including gender, age, obesity, ethnicity, and more. These would all combine to affect lifespan, disease incidence, and more. However, if there was enough of this data from tens of millions of people, they would be able to normalize and remove most of these complex factors. This left only one variable—the effect that Delta-32 had on CCR5.

The presentation was similar to Rosaline’s Simulation Mode; this was the power of tens of millions of very large databases, statistics, and artificial intelligence programs.

—It’s somewhat close to the answer.

Rosaline thought nothing of it, but the scientists were absolutely astounded.

“No way...” they exclaimed.

[Life expectancy:

CCR5_WT: 88 years

CCR5_Delta32: 61 years

Compared to wild-type CCR5, the life expectancy of a person with the Delta-32 mutation is reduced by 27 years.]

Even He Jiankui was speechless.

‘What did A-GenBio make...?’

Everyone was shocked at the astonishing data analysis.

Understanding the effects of the Delta-32 mutation in CCR5 on humans would require an enormous amount of experimentation and research. However, they could find certain differences by gathering hundreds of thousands of people with and without the mutation and comparing these large populations. This allowed them to find a correlation between the mutation and health without having to do complicated experiments.

“This large difference in life expectancy has yet to be interpreted biologically, but based on the results of several animal experiments conducted at A-GenBio, the CCR5 gene seems to be involved in telomere formation and immunity,” Young-Joon said. “This means that if this gene is not working properly during embryogenesis, people with this mutation may be more susceptible to common colds and other illnesses, which leads to a shorter lifespan.”

Young-Joon glanced at He Jiankui.

“Simply put, Doctor He Jiankui inserted a life expectancy-reducing gene.”

“...”

The conference room froze in silence.

“Originally, I was going to genetically engineer embryos using Cas9 based on these GWAS and animal experimental data,” Young-Joon said. “In that case, I would have been removing Delta-32 in the embryo rather than inserting it because no parent would want to pass on a life-shortening gene to their baby.”

Thud.

He Jiankui collapsed into his chair. He had heard that Young-Joon was going to present GWAS at the symposium, but he didn’t realize it was this bad. It was airtight; it was statistically perfect data.

However, his nightmare wasn’t over.

“And in the case of Mimi, the genetically engineered baby, there’s a bigger problem. I said that Doctor He violated two points in the moratorium, right?”

Young-Joon went to the next slide.

“Another mutation was introduced into Mimi besides Delta-32,” Young-Joon said. “This happened because someone who was inexperienced in working with Cas9 conducted this experiment without enough verification at the cellular level.”

1. Ilbo is Korea for “Daily News.” ☜