this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 90 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Is nobody concerned that illegal experiments on babies only gets you 3 years?

Maybe they were Uyghurs so it was classified as "property damage" in Chinese law.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 43 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Be careful, you might get banned from lemmy dot ml for hatespeech against dictatorships.

[–] Probius@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why did you self censor by saying "dot"?

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

I wrote that on my phone's touch keyboard, and I didn't want to use \. to escape the dot character to avoid autohotlinking.

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago

I've blocked that instance, but if they need more material to ban me I have it.

[–] Aux@feddit.uk -5 points 3 months ago

Who cares about a tankie instance?

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The devil is in the details....

You are likely thinking (as I am) that he implanted robotic arms on babies but he may have just rubbed sage oil on them for all we know

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

He used CRISPR to make babies immune to HIV.

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 26 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

No, he inserted a gene that is associated with resistance to HIV, but is also associated with increased risk of some cancers. He did this without informed consent, he did this without running it by an ethics board, he did this without knowing whether it would work or not.

Let’s stop pretending that he’s a good guy that just magically made HIV immune babies.

Edit: it also didn’t work. The babies have genes both with and without the mutation.

[–] T156@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

We also don't know if it was just that gene that was altered, or if there are other effects. Modern gene editing isn't so precise that we can edit just the gene we want. A lot of genes with similar sequences as the target can also be affected.

It's basically like firing a shotgun at the house they live in. You might hit the one you want, but you may also hit other unrelated genes in the process.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world -3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Thanks for the info

definitely on the evil side considering he probably planed to infect them to test his theories

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

Nope, he had no plans to infect them. The babies had parents who were HIV-positive.

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Did not have baby zombie apocalypse on my Bingo card, but there ya go

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

Depends how successful the experiment is (and probably on what the goal is as well).

If he'd been testing the effects of grass vs grain feed on human fat marbling, I'd imagine the sentence would have been a little more severe

[–] nope@jlai.lu 1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

And in what context medical experiments should be allowed on babies ?

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 4 points 3 months ago

Yet we still have default circumcisions in the US, no?

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 4 points 3 months ago

A lot of contexts? Like the development depending on formula vs mother's milk? Experimenting doesn't need to mean vivisection or injecting unregulated drugs, but if you need to do the experiments illegally, I'm not sure it was something "safe"

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago

And China executed a shitload of people for political dissent...