(yes, this is a real post by someone who also happened to have actually been arrested for gene editing embryos)
If I microwave my balls does that count as gene editing?
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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If I proofread my cousin Eugene's book report, does that count as Gene editing?
I think you'll need ionizing radiation, not microwaves.
I'm not sure, but it may win you a Darwin award
is your name Gene?
You know what would complete my life?
An illegal bio-engineering charge sounds great on a CV.
Especially when there's no one left to read it.
Is this the guy who cured HIV in two embryos by gene editing and was then shunned by the scientific community for not following regulation and procedure and playing god?
No, it's a guy who edited the genes of some embryos in the hopes that a particular gene mutation would give resistance to HIV.
Only: the gene editing didn't actually give the specific version of the gene studied to have an effect on HIV susceptibility, the gene is also associated with memory and other brain function, and the gene was incompletely edited so that there are multiple versions of the genes in both kids, when the studied mutation needed to be present in both chromosomes of the chromosome pair in order to show some kind of effect on HIV.
Even if you believe that the evidence is strong enough to support the idea that a mutation in this gene can give HIV resistance, this guy didn't actually do it in a way that was scientifically sound, and now two real human beings have to live their lives with the effects, including any off target effects, whatever they might be.
It’s illegal to gene edit embryos? What happened to said embryos? Real life X-men?
If he got incredibly lucky, they're immune to AIDS. It's much more likely that they're not and will develop symptoms of new and exciting genetic disorders never seen before.
The biggest problem was that the technique used is really unreliable, so you'd expect off-target edits to be more common than on-target ones for a human-sized genome. For bacteria, you can get around it by letting the modified bacteria reproduce for a few generations, then testing most of them. If they're all good, then it worked, and if any aren't, you need to make a new batch. Testing DNA destroys the cells you're testing, so if you test enough cells in a human embryo to be sure that the edits worked, it dies. You can't just start when the embryo is a single cell to ensure that the whole thing's been edited in the same way as you need to test something pre-edit to be able to detect off-target edits.
Testing DNA destroys the cells you're testing, so if you test enough cells in a human embryo to be sure that the edits worked, it dies.
I feel like we're ignoring the obvious solution here. Stick the kids with an AIDS needle and see what happens! /s
That tests the AIDS immunity, but not whether there are off-target edits. IIRC, the mothers were all HIV-positive, so the children are all pretty likely to be exposed anyway, which was part of how he justified the experiment to himself.
the fathers were HIV-positive, not the mothers.
that (besides the obvious ethical concerns) was a big reason behind the backlash from the genome editing community. we had already known a much less invasive method for preventing HIV infection of the embryo in this case, by 'washing' the seminal fluid away from sperm (sperm cannot become infected with HIV, but the HIV particles would be in the fluid surrounding the sperm).
I might be wrong here, but iirc the virus doesn't automatically pass on to the embryo and HIV doesn't always "take" either. Even a blood transfusion has a limited chance of infection, like 30% or so IIRC
They are not immune to HIV. They lack the receptor for HIV. Many people lack this receptor naturally.
People without the receptor that HIV targets are immune to HIV because of that, like how a rock is immune to verbal abuse or double foot amputees are immune to ingrown toenails. The immune system being able to kill something isn't the only way things can be immune to other things.
Immune here means you have an immune response. I'm pretty sure the word here is "carrier" because unless your body is actively destroying it, the virus is hitching a ride.
- this is a shitpost community, not a biotech publication, so immune here means the dictionary definition, not any domain-specific technical jargon, otherwise people can't make shitposts about diplomatic immunity
- lacking the receptor that HIV uses to hijack the regular immune response in order to reproduce means the regular immune response destroys it
- even in a normal person, after exposure, a lot of HIV gets destroyed by other parts of the immune system, often enough to eliminate it before an infection gains a foothold. Once an infection takes hold, it outbreeds the immune response as it's the part best equipped to deal with a large viral load that it interferes with.
- if you've got the virus in your body, but due to the lack of the receptor, it can't reproduce, then it doesn't remain viable for very long as each viron accumulates damage over time, and ceases to function once it's too badly damaged. People carrying a disease have enough viral reproduction going on to balance out the virus being destroyed.
How about we operate at high school biology levels of understanding?
As for whether the virus will be eliminated, it depends on the health of the immune system and the person.
OED:
- totally or partially resistant to a particular infectious disease or pathogen.
- protected or exempt, especially from an obligation or the effects of something.
Merriam Webster
: not susceptible or responsive
especially: having a high degree of resistance to a disease
a: produced by, involved in, or concerned with immunity or an immune response
b: having or producing antibodies or lymphocytes capable of reacting with a specific antigen
a: marked by protection
b: free, exempt
So unless you pretend that MW's 2b sense is the only valid one, the immunity is immunity.
If you have a sample of HIV at 37°C in blood, but with all the immune cells removed, it'll still all become inert after around a week simply due to chemical reactions with other components of blood etc.. It's pretty comparable to a population of animals - if you take away their ability to reproduce, they'll die of old age when left for long enough even if you're not actively killing them.
Edit: fat-fingered the save button while previewing the formatting
Context is how you determine definitions. This is not hard. We're not talking about legal immunity here.
And the context was a sentence that was correct if you used OED sense 1, or MW sense 1, but you decided to parse it as MW sense 2b and then complain that the sentence was incorrect.
You do not understand what immunity is. you are using it as a metaphor.
Even if you ignore that there's an entirely valid sense of the word immune that has nothing do do with biology (i.e. the one in phrases like diplomatic immunity), my original comment is entirely consistent with the dictionary definition of the biological sense of the word. There are probably sub-fields of biology where immunity is used as jargon for something much more specific than the dictionary definition, but this is lemmyshitpost, not a peer-reviewed domain-specific publication.
It’s illegal to gene edit embryos?
Not in all countries. In US, it's not illegal unless you use federal grant money.
So Sam Altman is starting a company to do this, basically targeted eugenics for wealthy people. Of course, the technology is not 100% accurate, so there will be children born with genetic abnormalities or disease, ...so keep the receipt!
That sounds horrible. So what do they do with the kids born with issues? Are the wealthy just going to send the kid to be adopted or somehow make it legal to dispose of babies?
Reminds me:
In episode 5 of this show:
The government has this sort of what I call a "breeding program" that basically artificially creates embryos and insert them into women who's main job in this dystopian future is to raise the kids. Exams at 15 and 18, if fail, then the embryo is considered "defective" and the government soldiers take the kids to an "advancement program", which is secretly just forced euthanasia. Having ADHD is also considered "defective" and they get terminated.
Better yet, they'll have the carrying mother deported with the yet to be born baby, or simply disposed of in a recycling center
Woodchipper's parked out back
It's not abortion if the baby is born.
This guy did so to two children, giving them an experimental immunity gene IIRC. He promptly faced jailtime for medical malpractice.
He apparently is back in the news for wanting to do alzheimers testing on mice and then zygotes. this time all above board, he says.
That's all wrong.
He edited out the receptor for HIV. This is natural in some people. He did it for cash.
He's not a doctor. The infraction is editing the human germline, which is not illegal in the USA, but is in most countries.
Thank you. I figured i'd gotten info wrong but all the articles I found about him were being extremely vague, so i figured i'd leave things up to Cunningham's Law.
Not enough jail time
We are never going to turn lizards into Charizards without breaking some eggs
Doesn’t birth break eggs? And nobody is complaining about that!
It's real. I knew about him already, but I didn't know about his tweets.
https://xcancel.com/Jiankui_He/status/1912340929421406229
EDIT: Say what you want about his ethics, but the posts are pretty solid ngl
I gene edited your mom this morning
There's like a 1 in a million chance your sperm wins out though.
sometimes I can't believe this guy has a phd from rice
