> The paper had an enthusiastic reception. “These promising results might pave the way for the development of an effective clinical treatment,” Kevin Bender, a neuroscientist at UC San Francisco, wrote in an accompanying commentary. At the time, Bender had no idea that a girl had received it and was already dead. Meanwhile, Chinese state media, CCTV, called the work “the first ray of hope” for “countless families suffering such diseases.”

Oof, there's something deeply unjust about that, a kind of "adding insult to fatality."

People celebrating that a new treatment will save children and give hope... with no acknowledgement that it was just tried and cost you both.

Sounds extremely similar to the first victims of Macchiarini. He and his entourage were writing and publishing success stories about his experiments when the victims had already died.

"Millions of deaths don't matter if we can save just one." is an increasingly common take.