An organization that trains young people for conservation jobs is recycling dead trees and replacing them with new ones, salvaging valuable lumber in the process. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Long Beach, California.
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Day: February 22, 2023
A controversial Chinese biophysicist, who had been imprisoned after creating the world’s first gene-edited babies, had his Hong Kong work visa revoked after immigration officials suspected he lied on an application form for a talent scheme.
He Jiankui, who sparked an international scientific and ethical debate in 2018 when he revealed he had created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies resistant to HIV, said at the time at an international conference in Hong Kong that he had modified two embryos before they were placed in their mother’s womb.
The scientist said he used a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls before birth. He said he had targeted a gene known as CCR5 and edited it in a way he believed would protect the girls from infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It later emerged that a third gene-edited baby had been born.
The former associate professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology — who has since been fired — was later accused of having forged approval documents from ethics boards. He was sentenced by a Chinese court to three years in prison in late 2019 for illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing intended for reproduction. He was released in April 2022.
The scientist posted on the Chinese social media platform WeChat on Saturday that he had been granted the visa on February 11 under the talent scheme. It was aimed at attracting people with rich work experience and good academic qualifications from all over the world to explore opportunities in Hong Kong.
He said he would conduct gene-editing research using artificial intelligence and was “optimistic about [the future of] Hong Kong,” reported the South China Morning Post. His original post cannot be found.
“We plan to use artificial intelligence tools to evolve the adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids to improve the efficiency of gene therapy and promote affordable gene therapy for rare diseases,” he was quoted by the paper as saying. AAV is a small virus that has emerged as the most promising platform for gene therapy.
Scientists engineer the outer protein shell of AAV, known as capsid, to improve targeting and efficacy.
In response to the furor, the Hong Kong government issued a late-night statement on Tuesday, saying the visa of an individual who “made false representation” has been rescinded and a criminal investigation launched. Officials did not name He but made reference to media reports regarding an applicant being granted a visa “despite having been imprisoned for illegal medical practice.”
“After reviewing the application, the Immigration Department suspected the visa/entry permit was obtained by false representation, and the Director of Immigration had declared the visa/entry permits invalid in accordance with the law, and would conduct a criminal investigation to follow up,” said the statement.
The statement also warned that applicants who give false information face a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison and a fine of $17,842 upon conviction. The government has also issued a new requirement that future applicants under the visa scheme must declare whether they have any criminal records.
Since his prison release 10 months ago, He has established a laboratory in Beijing dedicated to developing affordable drugs for rare genetic diseases. Although He insisted that his work was to help people, international medical experts have criticized his gene-editing procedure as risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified with inadequate consent from the families involved.
In a study published in the journal Nature Medicine in June 2019, scientists found that people who have two copies of a so-called “Delta 32” mutation of CCR5 — which protects against HIV infection in some people — also have a significantly higher risk of premature death.
He told The Guardian newspaper early this month that he moved “too quickly” by pressing ahead with the gene-editing procedure but stopped short of apologizing. He declined to elaborate on what measures should have been taken but said he would give further details at a scheduled talk on the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology at the University of Oxford next month.
He then said in a Twitter message on February 10 that he was “not ready to talk about my experience in the past three years, so I decided that I will not visit Oxford in March.”
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Researchers in Kenya say they’ve detected an invasive mosquito that can transmit malaria in different climates, threatening progress to fight the parasitic disease. Kenya’s Medical Research Institute this week urged the public to use mosquito nets and clean up areas where mosquitos can breed.
Kenya has detected the presence of a new malaria carrier, which was first discovered in the region in Djibouti in 2012.
The new carrier, the Anopheles stephensi mosquito, transmits plasmodium vivax, the parasite the causes the deadliest type of malaria.
Bernhards Ogutu is a chief researcher at Kenya Medical Research Institute. He says it was only a matter of time before the mosquito was discovered in the country after it appeared in Ethiopia and South Sudan.
“We’ve not been able to pick plasmodium vivax which is found in Asia and Kenya. It’s there in Ethiopia and this vector can also transmit it,” said Ogutu. “So that will also look at whether we might have plasmodium vivax in coming up with this new vector showing in our place. Vivax is more difficult to treat in that you can get treated and real up because it keeps staying in the body and the liver.”
Malaria affects over 229 million people each year and kills over 400,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.
More than a quarter of a million children die in Africa each year as a result of the mosquito-borne disease, including over 10,000 in Kenya.
Ogutu expresses concern for urban residents, saying that the new carrier may feed on poor environmental management systems.
“So the fact that this can survive in urban areas where water is not clean and that can transmit, that’s the worry people are having. For the time being its to monitor and see to what extent we are going to have its spreading and what impact it will be having,” said Ogutu.
Redentho Dabelen is a public officer in the Marsabit County town of Laisamis, where the vector was discovered.
He says experts are going to communities to teach people how to protect themselves from the disease.
“To sensitize them and teach them how to prevent themselves from the vector bites. We are trying to spray the houses,” said Dabelen. “We are trying to tell them about the disease through the community health volunteers and if they get infected they go to the hospital.”
According to the researchers, the population should continue to use malaria control tools such as sleeping under mosquito nets and practicing good environmental management and sanitation.
In 2021, the WHO approved a malaria vaccine for children aged five months to two years that has been shown to reduce child deaths.
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Participants at a global U.N. conference in France’s capital on Wednesday urged the international community to find better safeguards against online disinformation and hate speech.
Hundreds of officials, tech firm representatives, academics and members of civil society were invited to the two-day meeting hosted by the United Nation’s cultural fund to brainstorm how to best vet content while upholding human rights.
“Digital platforms have changed the way we connect and face the world, the way we face each other,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in opening remarks.
But “only by fully evaluating this technological revolution can we ensure it is a revolution that does not compromise human rights, freedom of expression and democracy.”
UNESCO has warned that despite their benefits in communication and knowledge sharing, social media platforms rely on algorithms that “often prioritize engagement over safety and human rights.”
Filipina investigative journalist Maria Ressa, who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for exposing abuses under former president Rodrigo Duterte, said social media had allowed lies to flourish.
“Our communication systems today are insidiously manipulating us,” she told attendees.
“We focus only on content moderation. It’s like there is a polluted river. We take a glass … we clean up the water and then dump it back,” she said.
But “what we have to do is to go all the way to the factory polluting the river, shut it down and then resuscitate the river.”
She said that at the height of online campaigns against her for her work, she had received up to 98 hate messages an hour.
A little over half sought to undermine her credibility as a journalist, including false claims that she peddled “fake news,” she said.
The rest were personal attacks targeting her gender, “skin color and sexuality” or even “threats of rape and murder.”
‘This must stop’
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula earlier addressed the conference in a letter, after disgruntled supporters of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro on January 8 invaded the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court in Brasilia.
“What happened that day was the culmination of a campaign initiated much before, and that used as ammunition, lies and disinformation,” he said.
“To a large extent, this campaign was nurtured, organized and disseminated through several digital platforms and messaging apps,” he added.
“This must stop. The international community needs, from now on, to work to give effective answers to this challenging question of our times.”
Facebook whistleblower Christopher Wylie also contributed to the discussions.
The data scientist has revealed how he helped Cambridge Analytica, founded by former U.S. president Donald Trump’s former right-hand man Steve Bannon, to use unauthorized personal data harvested from Facebook to help swing a string of elections, including Trump’s U.S. presidential win in 2016.
“Many countries around the world have issued or are currently considering national legislation to address the spread of harmful content,” UNESCO said in a statement ahead of the conference.
But “some of this legislation risks infringing the human rights of their populations, particularly the right to freedom of expression and opinion,” it warned.
Decades of violence and humanitarian crises have left many Somali people traumatized, according to a health study by the U.N. and Somali organizations. Harun Maruf reported from Washington and Abdulkadir Zubeyr in Mogadishu spoke to mental health doctors and patients in the country. They have this report narrated by Salem Solomon. Camera: Abdulkadir Zubeyr. Video editor Betty Ayoub.
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