BY IVY LI ’21

He Jiankui is an associate professor of biology at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. He has recently claimed to have successfully modified the genes of infant twins, the first in the world to do so. He announced on Monday, Nov. 26 that his team had successfully altered the genes of twin baby girls under the pseudonyms Nana and Lulu, who were born earlier this month in Guangdong Province, according to The Beijing News. The goal, He said in an interview, was to produce babies with the ability to resist HIV infection in the future by disabling CCR5, a gene that enables the virus to take hold.