He's pretty clearly a monster or at least monster adjacent. He and his team

* Took hundreds of thousands of dollars under the table to develop the treatment

* Neglected to take steps that would determine whether the treatment was safe to use on humans

* Didn't inform the family that the treatment could possibly kill their daughter

* After the treatment did kill their daughter, he published the study anyway except stripped of any mention of the failed human trial and of any negative side effects caused by the immune system reacting to the virus

The most generous interpretation of this is that Qiu and his team were racing to be the first to cure a mental disorder using gene editing and neglected to take the necessary safety precautions, but that still makes him a horrible person because it resulted in the unnecessary death of a child just because he was hoping to be first. I'm glad the parents decided to go public about this (especially since they must feel devastated about their daughter's death) if it means he won't get to try the same risky procedure on other children.

> Didn't inform the family that the treatment could possibly kill their daughter

From the article:

> The parents had heard about serious side effects, including deaths, caused by other gene therapies, and knew the greatest risk would be Mei’s immune response to the massive dose of virus. Qiu said getting the dose right was critical, but infusing the viruses directly into Mei’s spinal fluid, rather than the blood, would minimize the threat of a reaction because it would bypass the kidneys and liver.

The article paints a picture of well-educated parents who were incredibly focused and dedicated to their "mission", which was basically to "cure" their daughter's condition using gene editing, something that had never been done before. They participated in groups, recorded the conversations with the doctor and ostensibly did enough research to have concerns in the first place.

The doctor violated every ethics rule in the book and should never be allowed to touch another human being, but I don't think it's fair to pretend that the parents were unwitting.

> * Took hundreds of thousands of dollars under the table to develop the treatment

I'm in two minds about this.

On the one hand, at face value the funding and payments seem dubious - especially with the mention of one of the doctors returning his payments, suggesting they were for his personal enrichment, rather than payment for the costs of the treatment development and trial.

On the other hand, the parents were literally funding the creation, for the first time ever, of a highly complex treatment essentially custom-made for their daughter's condition. This required a lot of detailed and expensive science, with the generation of a mouse model of the disease, followed by development of the treatment, and then the testing of this in monkeys. In US/EU, this work would likely cost millions of dollars/euros, and it's not unreasonable that it would also cost a significant sum of money in China.

If he had succeeded, though, he would have been a hero, both to the parents and the world. And the same racing that we are condemning as monstrous would have saved other children as well.

Obviously I'm not saying he is a hero or that what he did is right, just pointing out that the ethical tradeoffs in medical research like this get very complicated very fast. Ultimately it boils down to the trolley problem: is sacrificing a few worth saving many others?

> monster

> monster

> monster

Perhaps if his genes were properly modified, then he could become nearly human in the court of public opinion.