He Jiankui (AP)

Hong Kong authorities have announced that work visa canceled of chinese scientist What was that Sentenced to prison for creating the first modified babies genetically of the world, thus thwarting his plans to move his research to the city.

Immigration officials in the former British colony suspected the expert of falsifying the application form, according to Hong Kong Radio and Television Today. RTHK.

the chinese scientist He Jiankuiwhat was released in April last year after a three-year sentencesaid on Tuesday that his visa had been approved through a local talent recruitment program, and that he was seeking collaborators to advance his work on gene therapy for rare diseases.

“I am contacting universities, scientific research organizations and companies based in Hong Kong,” he said, as quoted by local media. “If there are specific and suitable opportunities, I will consider the possibility of working in the city,” he added.

However, on Tuesday evening, the authorities of the semi-autonomous city notified that they had canceled the permit corresponding to a person who “provided false information” in the application, and added that a criminal investigation has been opened.

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The government statement did not name him, but hinted at the details of his case, according to the Hong Kong daily. Hong Kong Free Press.

Likewise, the Administration has clarified that those applying for a visa in the future must declare whether he has a criminal recorda requirement that Labor Secretary Chris Sun Yuk-han admitted did not exist when he filed his forms, according to the newspaper. The standard.

The official would not comment on ‘individual cases’ and pointed out that the Immigration Department decides on entry visas to the city, which belongs to the People’s Republic of China but has its own border under post-decolonization government status, in the late 1990s.

The controversial researcher, who rose to worldwide fame in 2018 after claiming he succeeded in creating babies genetically engineered to resist HIVrecently assured that his intention was to conduct research on gene editing in the former British colony using artificial intelligence.

He, a professor at the South University of Science and Technology in the city of Shenzhen, southeast China, until his dismissal in January 2019, was sentenced in December of the same year to 3 years of prison for his experiment.

The scientist at a human genome editing conference in Hong Kong in 2018 (Reuters)
The scientist at a human genome editing conference in Hong Kong in 2018 (Reuters)

According to He’s experiment, performed using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique, three babies were born: in 2018, twins named Lulu and Nana, and the following year, another named Amy.

In his last public appearance, at a conference at the University of Hong Kong in November 2018, the scientist said he was “proud” of his work and stressed that his study was not aimed at eliminating genetic diseases but rather to “give girls the natural ability” to resist possible future HIV infection.

The scandal led the Chinese authorities to review their regulations on genetic modification in humans, which they now require national-level approval for clinical research in this or other “high-risk biomedical technologies.”

Similarly, the Chinese government has issued new guidelines to reform ethics review processes in areas such as life sciences, medicine or artificial intelligence.

(With information from EFE)

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