The changes he’d made to their DNA were permanent and heritable, meaning they could be passed down to future generations. A Chinese court sent him to prison for three years, and the Chinese government banned genome editing for reproductive purposes. Since his release in 2022, He says, he’s worked on a gene therapy for boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Emily Mullin: Back in 2018 the scientific consensus was that gene editing was not a mature technology. The new lab is germline gene editing—embryo gene editing—and it is focusing on trying to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.