Thread by @antonioregalado

Another excellent record for the history book of who knew what about CRISPR babies and when, from someone close to the action. I will tweet timeline of highlights with annotations and commentary. (thread)

https://twitter.com/KevinADavies/status/1093530306001416197

This is the first person account of how CRISPR babies incident came to light in Fall 2018 by Robin Lovell-Badge of the Crick institute, a famous developmental biologist. dev.biologists.org/content/146/3/…

Here is Robin Lovell-Badge leading the Q/A interrogation of Jiankui He onstage in Hong Kong at the 2nd International Genome Editing. Gently pinned CRISPRbaby man down on some key facts, omissions.

FYI, Lovell-Badge a big wig cause he co-discovered SRY, the testes determining factor. It's a single gene on Y chromosome that makes animals male. If u move it, u can make females male. Link to 1991 paper. counts +++ considering molec tools in use then. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2030730

Here's the timeline. Apparently, by early November, 2018 the Summit committee (organizers of big gene edit powwow in Hong Kong), got wind that something was afoot. I expect JK himself was the proximate source. Still didn't know about the babies.

But phase 1 of JK's big roll out worked, it seems. Tho he was a CRISPR nonentity without publications, he was invited to present his preclinical data (embryos, animals) on center stage. He was, it seems, a credible threat

(more shortly)

Now it gets fascinating, because Lovell-Badge's account reveals to me for the first time how our reporting here at MIT Technology on Sun. 25th Nov shook things loose.

This section:

On Sun 25 in the AM, I located Jiankui He's study documents. I provided these to four experts in confidence. Two are named in our article of that day published at 7:15pm....this account suggest my information was immediately shared with Jennifer Doudna

Lovell-Badge reports that Doudna has "just heard" of the two babies on the 25th. But Doudna has said she got a "babies born" email from JK on November 22. Did she wait three days to inform entire organizing committee? Why? What was plan?

This is a correct description of what happened on my end, leading to the first report on JIankui's baby making. Here's our scoop. technologyreview.com/s/612458/exclu…

love this part

so by the time the news broke, the many people keeping JK's secret appear to include the editor of a certain top journal, the members of a certain committee, the communications staff of a certain national academy.

By Monday, next day, JK joined key committee members at a dinner to brief them, as previously described in Science by @sciencecohen . As He showed slides the onlookers "were increasingly horrified"

Decision is made to let JK present the baby data, followed by a QnA.

"The whole idea was to get JK to talk, because we knew that this would be the only opportunity that most people would have of interacting with him. "

On stage, JK discloses there is a second pregnancy

JK He also argued that a Chinese guideline against transferring gene-altered embryos to the womb didn't really count. Not a law. He might be right.

Why did JK do it? Lovell-Badge says

-honestly thought it was good
-wanted to be first
-next big thing
-hero worship Bob Edwards, inventor of IVF

difference is Edwards published preclinical data, worked in open

Lovell-Badge, though, is in favor of embryo editing and edited people. He lists the arguments in favor. I added some commentary.

How long till we get over the shock and just do proceed with this new form of medicine? That's the big question.

To Lovell-Badge, opponents have following motivations
--gut reaction
--read too much sci-fi / see too many dystopic films
--pro-life
--anti-progress

VERY interesting coda to this. Lovell-Badge thinks the JK debacle was a positive. Reason? What my business calls "earned media." That is, public attention you don't pay for but get for free.

JK's live presentation of his 'unconscionable' behavior got 1.8 million viewers!

I have to agree. When you're trying to sell something, even something as dramatic as modifying human babies with CRISPR....

"There's no such thing as bad publicity!"

/end