Despite reports that He Jiankui, the controversial gene-editing researcher, has been detained, the Southern University of Science and Technology, where He was a researcher, tells the South China Morning Post that is not the case.
According to the South China Morning Post, He has not been seen since he gave a presentation last week at a gene-editing conference in which he described the work he did to with the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool to modify the CCR5 gene of two infants, Newsweek quotes the Chinese-language Apple Daily as reporting that that He was brought back from the conference by the president of Southern University, Chen Shiyi, and placed under house arrest on campus.
But as the Morning Post reports, the university denies He has been detained. "Right now nobody's information is accurate, only the official channels are," a university spokesperson tells the Morning Post. "We cannot answer any questions regarding the matter right now, but if we have any information, we will update it through our official channels."
He's announcement that he had edited the genomes of twin girls led to international condemnation and a spate of investigations, including by China's National Health Commission and Shenzen's Health and Family Planning Commission.