During his visits to the U.S. in 2017, Jiankui began hinting at his plans to a few of the American researchers he met, many of whom later expressed regret that they did not try harder to stop him or blow the whistle. Most notably, he confided in William Hurlbut, a neurobiologist and bioethicist at Stanford, who had co-organized the January 2017 Berkeley gathering with Doudna. They had, Hurlbut later told the journal Stat, “several long conversations, like four or five hours long, about science and ethics.” Hurlbut realized that Jiankui was intent on making embryo edits leading to live births.
...more
