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A court in China on Monday sentenced He Jiankui, the researcher who shocked the global scientific community when he claimed that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies, to three years in prison for carrying out “illegal medical practices.” In a surprise announcement from a trial that was closed to the public, the court in the southern city of Shenzhen found Dr. He guilty of forging approval documents from ethics review boards to recruit couples in which the man had H.I.V. and the woman did not, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported. (Wee, 12/30)

On Monday, a Shenzhen court convicted Dr. He and two others on charges of illegally practicing medicine related to carrying out human-embryo gene-editing intended for reproduction, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The court said Dr. He hoped to profit by commercializing the technology and that he forged documents and concealed the true nature of the procedures from both the patients he recruited and doctors who performed them, according to Xinhua. The report said all three defendants pleaded guilty. (Wen and Marcus, 12/30)

“The prison sentence and stiff financial penalty sends a message to other Chinese scientists that unsanctioned efforts at human germline editing will not be tolerated,” University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine researcher Kiran Musunuru told BuzzFeed News, by email. “I expect that it will have a deterrent effect, certainly in China and possibly elsewhere.” (Vergano, 12/30)

In January this year, investigators from Guangdong Province Health Commission said that He had conducted the work "in pursuit of personal fame and fortune, with self-raised funds and deliberate evasion of supervision and private recruitment of related personnel." The authorities also said He forged ethical review documents and blood tests to circumvent a ban on assisted reproduction for HIV-positive patients. (Hollignsworth and Yee, 12/30)

In November 2018, He Jiankui, then an associate professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, said he had used gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to change the genes of twin girls to protect them from getting infected with the AIDS virus in the future. The backlash in China and globally about the ethics of his research and work was fast and widespread. (12/30)

Gene-editing for reproductive purposes is illegal in most countries. China's health ministry issued regulations in 2003 prohibiting gene-editing of human embryos, though the procedure is allowed for "non-reproductive purposes". (12/30)

Two other researchers involved in the project received lesser sentences and fines. Zhang Renli was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1 million yuan. Qin Jinzhou received an 18-month sentence, though he got a two-year reprieve, and a 500,000-yuan fine. (12/30)

Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley who co-invented CRISPR, the gene editing technology that He utilized, has been outspoken in condemning the experiments and has repeatedly said CRISPR is not ready to be used for reproductive purposes. “When I saw the announcement from Dr. He, initially, one of my very early thoughts was, ‘Gosh, I wonder if this is just the first of multiple such announcements that will start to be made by fertility clinics in various countries,’" Doudna recalled Monday. “That hasn’t happened — and I think that is good.” (Johnson, 12/30)

Chinese scientist He Jiankui has been sentenced to three years in prison for conducting gene-editing experiments on human embryos. (Stein, 12/30)