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When the twin girls were born, one October night in 2018, they carried a secret: a hidden tweak in their DNA even the hospital in China didn’t know about. They were the world’s first genetically engineered humans.
The next month, news of their existence broke just as the scientist behind the engineering, Dr He Jiankui, was addressing peers at a global summit. Facing down an uncharacteristically rowdy hall of scientists, he explained: with fertility treatments illegal for prospective parents with HIV in China, he had instead edited the girls as embryos to be resistant to the AIDS virus carried by their father. He said genetic testing showed that “Lulu” and “Nana” were “as healthy as any babies”. Their real identity is now a state secret in China and it is not known how they are doing.