Thread by @michaelzlin

Was just thinking that the CRISPR baby episode foreshadowed many of the issues were now grappling with on SARSCoV2 origins. And then because it can read my mind, my news feed told me that my colleague Hank Greeley has a book out about it this week. irishtimes.com/news/science/c…

What are the similarities?
- A controversial line of investigation because of its potential for harm
- A high-visibility topic, so some fame to those who navigate safety and ethics properly
- Chinese scientists eager to show they are as technically capable as Western scientists

Now we don't know where SARSCoV2 came from, so there could be no involvement of Chinese scientists. But in both cases, the central PR China government has squelched the release of certain records that, if everything was done properly, would have exonerated the people involved.

For He Jiankui, those records are the genomic sequences of the CRISPRed babies. For sure their genomes must have been sequenced 100 times over by now. So were there unwanted mutations? If not, you'd think it would be in the government's interest to say so. They haven't.

For WIV, those records are logs of all samples entering, being cultured or sequenced, or being disposed, together with logs of visits to mines and caves. WIV was doing this work as a public service so the government should be happy to provide records if they did everything right.

These issues (for CRISPR babies) were discussed in the article: Interviewer: "You write in your book about the lack of transparency around this case. What do we know and what don’t we know?"

Hank: "The scariest thing about writing this book was that I became sure of almost nothing in terms of what actually happened. The testimony we have – the evidence we have – all comes from Jiankui and his colleagues..."

"...and from around four press releases issued by the official Chinese news agency. And really, that’s about it. That’s completely different to how we would usually have an understanding of science in the West, where everything is completely transparent..."

Interviewer: "Do we know where these babies are now? Is there any kind of medical monitoring of them?"
Hank: "No, we don’t. It’s all under the control of the Chinese government, and they are saying nothing... "

"One could publish details about their health anonymously... It’s similar to what we’ve seen more recently with the WHO’s investigation into the source of the Covid pandemic. The Chinese government are just not very transparent."

P.S. apologies to Hank; his last name is spelled Greely.