SHANGHAI (Xinhua) — The average organ transfer time has been reduced by 1 to 1.5 hours since China established a “green passage” three years ago, said an official with the National Health Commission.

In 2016, China’s health, police and transportation authorities jointly established this priority passage to ensure fast and safe transfer of donated human organs.

The move is aimed at shortening transportation time and reducing damage or waste of human organs to increase patient survival.

Subject to current medical technologies, the tolerance limit of cold ischemic time for livers is 12 hours, said Guo Yanhong, an official with the commission.

“Thus, these life-saving organ transfers are a race against time,” said Guo.

Due to China’s large geographical area and social economic development level, as well as needs to reduce the total cost for the patients, organs are usually transported by medical staff through civilian flights, high-speed railway or ambulances, according to Guo.

Some uncertain factors can lead to longer transfer times and adverse effects on the organ quality, said Guo, adding organ waste also takes place occasionally.

One organ transfer once took around 30 to 40 minutes from the airport to the high-speed railway station at Hongqiao in Shanghai, said Chen Jingyu, vice president of Wuxi People’s Hospital in east China’s Jiangsu Province.

Chen said now, the process can be completed in six to seven minutes.

In 2018, China recorded 6,302 organ donations and a record 20,000 transplantation operations, ranking second in the world for the number of donations and transplants, said Guo.

Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world by claiming he had helped make the first gene-edited babies. One year later, mystery surrounds his fate as well as theirs.

He has not been seen publicly since January, his work has not been published and nothing is known about the health of the babies.

“That’s the story — it’s all cloaked in secrecy, which is not productive for the advance of understanding,” said Stanford bioethicist Dr. William Hurlbut.

He talked with Hurlbut many times before He revealed at a Hong Kong science conference that he had used a tool called CRISPR to alter a gene in embryos to try to help them resist infection with the AIDS virus.

The work, which He discussed in exclusive interviews with The Associated Press, was denounced as medically unnecessary and unethical because of possible harm to other genes and because the DNA changes can pass to future generations.

Since then, many people have called for regulations or a moratorium on similar work, but committees have bogged down over who should set standards and how to enforce them.

“Nothing has changed,” said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania geneticist who just published a book about gene editing and the CRISPR babies case.

“I think we’re farther from governing this” now than a year ago, said Hurlbut, who disapproves of what He did. However, so much effort has focused on demonizing He that it has distracted from how to move forward, he said.

Here’s what’s known about the situation:

HE JIANKUI

He was last seen in early January in Shenzhen, on the balcony of an apartment at his university, which fired him from its faculty after his work became known. Armed guards were in the hall, leading to speculation he was under house arrest.

A few weeks later, China’s official news agency said an investigation had determined that He acted alone out of a desire for fame and would be punished for any violations of law.

Since then, AP’s efforts to reach him have been unsuccessful. Ryan Ferrell, a media relations person He hired, declined to comment. Ferrell previously said He’s wife had started paying him, which might mean that He is no longer in a position to do that himself.

Hurlbut, who had been in touch with He early this year, declined to say when he last heard from him.

THE BABIES

The Chinese investigation seemed to confirm the existence of twin girls whose DNA He said he altered.

The report said the twins and people involved in a second pregnancy using a gene-edited embryo would be monitored by government health departments. Nothing has been revealed about the third baby, which should have been born from that second pregnancy in late summer.

Chinese officials have seized the remaining edited embryos and He’s lab records.

“He caused unintended consequences in these twins,” Musunuru said of the gene editing. “We don’t know if it’s harming the kids.”

OTHERS WHO WERE INVOLVED

Rice University in Houston said it is still investigating the role of Michael Deem, whose name was on a paper He sent to a journal and who spoke with the AP about He’s work. Deem was He’s adviser when He attended Rice years ago.

The AP and others have reported on additional scientists in the U.S. and China who knew or strongly suspected what He was doing.

“Many people knew, many people encouraged him. He did not do this in a corner,” Hurlbut said.

THE SCIENCE

Scientists recently have found new ways to alter genes that may be safer than CRISPR. Gene editing also is being tested against diseases in children and adults, which is not controversial because those changes don’t pass to future generations. Some scientists think gene editing will become more widely accepted if it’s proved to work in those situations.

“It’s moving forward slowly because it’s being done responsibly,” Musunuru said.

PUBLIC OPINION

A forum was held in Berkeley, California, last month to get public views on gene editing — everything from modifying mosquitoes and crops to altering embryos.

The National Academy of Sciences recently pulled a video it made after concern arose about how it portrayed the ethically dicey science and its possible use to make designer babies. The academy has been leading some efforts to set standards for gene editing, and it gets most of its funding from the government, although a private grant paid for the video, a spokeswoman said.

An AP/NORC poll last year found that most Americans say it would be OK to use gene-editing to protect babies against disease, but not to change DNA so children are born smarter, faster or taller.

REGULATION

A moratorium is no longer strong enough, and regulation is needed, CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley recently wrote in a commentary in the journal Science.

She noted that the World Health Organization has asked regulators in all countries not to allow such experiments, and that a Russian scientist recently proposed one.

“The temptation to tinker” with the DNA of embryos, eggs or sperm “is not going away,” she wrote.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

HANGZHOU (Xinhua) — Chinese internet writer Chen Hongyan has formed a new habit in her creative process – regularly uploading her literary works onto a blockchain-based database.

After uploading a piece of writing, Chen, widely known among her readers by the pseudonym of Lingchen, will automatically receive a string of data as the electronic ID for her work.

Chen is a beneficiary of the blockchain technology used by the Hangzhou Internet Court, which was set up in September 2018 to step up intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. It was China’s first trial application of blockchain in the judicial area.

The judicial blockchain can help preserve evidence for copyright owners to better protect them from infringements. It can store data concerning time, location and identity on the blockchain, said Wang Jiangqiao, executive vice president of the Hangzhou Internet Court.

Numerous infringements came along with Chen’s fame. Her online literary works have more than 100 million clicks and her audiobooks have been played more than 1 million times.

“According to our rough statistics, one of my works was pirated by more than 3,000 websites, and it would take me a month to call all these infringers,” Chen said.

Chen said in the past if she went to court, she had to prove several basic facts, such as Lingchen was the original writer and she was the one using the pseudonym. She also had to collect enough evidence before the infringers deleted the content.

With the special ID, copyright owners like Chen can easily claim their IPR in advance. When disputes arise, they can hand in the blockchain data directly as strong judicial proof.

For years, the penalties for online infringements have been low, but copyright owners need to pay a high price if they want to protect their rights.

Chen Xinwen, general manager of a culture and media firm in Hangzhou, said copyright disputes always meant a loss of money for copyright owners.

In order to prove that they are the IPR holders and their rights have been infringed by others, they have to pay for the necessary notarization, forensic appraisal and lawsuit. Even if they win in the end, the compensation is not enough to cover the cost, Chen Xinwen said.

Cyberspace is a virtual world where electronic data can be easily tampered with, the behaviors of users are difficult to ascertain, and the authenticity of data is hard to identify, said Gao Fuping, dean of the School of Intellectual Property at East China University of Political Science and Law.

“But data on the blockchain is tamper-proof, traceable and verifiable, and it can help save the evidence for handling internet IPR disputes,” said Gao.

According to the Hangzhou Internet Court, the judicial blockchain has collected more than 2.1 billion pieces of data since its establishment, facilitating efforts to find the facts.

So far, China’s internet courts in Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou have all launched judicial applications of blockchain technology.

In August, the Supreme People’s Court of China decided to build a unified judicial blockchain platform to bring together courts, notary offices and forensic centers.

On Sunday, the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued a directive calling for intensified IPR protection.

“We hope to use the judicial blockchain platform to help build a credit system in cyberspace, reduce IPR infringements and promote judicial justice and efficiency,” said Wang.