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\n The controversial world of gene-edited babies, and some companies’ recent quests to push the technology forward.<\/p>\n
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A Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, made a shocking announcement to the world in 2018: He had secretly engineered the birth of the first gene-edited babies. The birth of the twins was seen as reckless and unethical by the scientific community. That’s because, among other things, the CRISPR gene-editing technique Jiankui used was so new. NPR science correspondent Rob Stein<\/a> has been following the controversial world of gene-editing and human reproduction, including some companies’ recent quests to push gene-editing technology forward.<\/p>\n Read more of Rob Stein’s reporting on the topic\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Interested in more science news? Let us know at shortwave@npr.org.\u00a0<\/p>\n Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at\u00a0plus.npr.org\/shortwave<\/a>.<\/p>\n Listen to Short Wave on Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Rob Stein checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The controversial world of gene-edited babies, and some companies’ recent quests to push the technology forward. jm1366\/Getty Images…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[916,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-79288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-genetics","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}