It was a different Friday’s evening - as I traveled 20km in busy traffic from Beijing’s CBD area (Chaoyang) to its Silicon Valley (Zhongguancun). This time I did not come for any business dinner rather I came for the start of Stanford Ignite program, a mini-MBA for entrepreneurs, at Peking University (PKU).

As I walked from PKU's entrance to Stanford Center where the program was held, the city noise gradually diminished and stunning views began to appear - a peaceful lake alongside with many trees and a pagoda. Somehow, they reinforced each other to create a "Zen" atmosphere. 

SCPKU sits deep inside the campus.  It was an architectural masterpiece mixing with Chinese and Western styles.  Simply by staying there,  I could easily feel inspired. It was full of state-of-the-art facilities, especially its immersive tele-conferencing technologies.

Having a group of 40 entrepreneurial people in the same room guaranteed that there would be a great amount of energy. However, what intrigued me from the first day was the enormous interests and energy coming from the other side of the world - Stanford GSB faculty. Though we saw each other only through two big screens, it did not stop the continual interactions between both sides, thanks to the state-of-the-art facility. There was constant exchange of opinions, and the lectures were very engaging.

Great lecturers made learning effortless. From one lecture to another, block by block, I found myself easily forming a business-centered framework. Many credits to the GSB faculty - they told stories and jokes; played music and waved hands; smiled and laughed. It turned out that those memorable moments effectively glued the hard pieces of knowledge together into something solid. It was indeed a very enjoyable and satisfying learning experience.

In addition to the lectures, a large part of the program was the team venture project where five people worked on a venture idea together and pitched it to real investors at the end of the program. I learned a tremendous amount from this experience. Having five strangers from diffrent backgrounds coming together to suddenly work on a new project with tight deadlines was a huge challenge. These challenges also meant great opportunities to learn. The program set up weekly milestones for each team to reach.  Those milestones were essentially project breakdowns that we could adopt to our own ventures. Weekly team check-ins and assigned mentors provided us feedback on areas we could improve and work on.  As a team, we have achieved so much from the beginning to the end.  Despite all the other excellent teams, we, in the end, won first place backed up by GSR venture!

Before I joined the Ignite Program, I was a full-time, solo entrepreneur. I brought my venture idea to the Ignite in hope of finding potential business partners, polishing my venture idea, and pitching it to potential VCs. With the exception of finding a business partner, I have achieved all of my targets. I would definitely recommend Ignite to other who are similarly interested around me.

Ignite Program has taught me a great deal (about business, teamwork etc.). Nevertheless, I think the core of Ignite is its people. When I close my eyes, what I remember are energetic lecturers, friendly classmates, always-smiling facilitators, inspiring speakers, and lovely team members. I can share all I learned to others around me, but they can’t get the rich experience that I have unless they join the program by themselves.  Welcome to the Ignite family.

About the author:  Zilong Wang is founder and CEO of Liblux Technology, a company that develops "interactive video" based social application for generation Z.  He obtained PhD (Optoelectronics) and BEng (Electronics Engineering) from University of Southampton, UK.

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On November 22, Dr. Delphine Red Shirt lectured on “The History of Native Americans” at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

The lecture started with George Sword and described the “colonizing process” from a free life to one of constant negotiation with the federal government and the pressures on the Native Americans to give up their way of life, but most importantly their land.  She also talked about his wife who still despite pressure to "colonize", in the photograph maintained her long hair (in two long neat braids) and traditional attitude in the way she dressed.  This is important because women are the "culture keepers" who often teach language to children and maintain the traditional ways.

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The photographs included “Chief” Red Shirt, her ancestor whom her grandfather is descended from.  A leader for Chief Red Cloud, he was often recognized as a "chief" by the federal government but in reality he was a military/police officer who served at the right hand of one of our greatest chiefs.   Her maternal grandfather, Standing Buffalo, whom Kevin Costner in his film, "Dances with Wolves" depicted our culture with great reverence.  In the museum Costner established in Deadwood, South Dakota (in the heart of our homelands, the Black Hills), Costner displayed Standing Buffalo in the entry way.  Standing Buffalo is the "Kaka (children's word for grandfather)" in her first book, Bead on an Anthill:  A Lakota Childhood" which was also translated and available in Mandarin.  Her second book, Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter is about Standing Buffalo's daughter, her mother; the second book is also translated into Mandarin.

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The photographs ended with the Wounded Knee massacre (often called a "battle" in American History) showing the killing site, the loading of the bodies, and the mass grave that was dug for the over 146 men, women, and children killed by the 7th Cavalry.  In history, our people, the Lakota had defeated this same cavalry at what is called "The Battle of the Little Big Horn" or "Custer's Last Stand".

The talk ended with the early 1970 "Occupation of Wounded Knee" by the American Indian Movement (AIM).  The two events reflect:  one a "killing of a dream" as Black Elk, one of our spiritual leaders who witnessed the aftermath called the massacre.  And the occupation of young Native Americans in February of 1973 when they symbolically took a stand against oppression.  A map showing the Occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco during the 1960's.  The beginning of an era that coincided with the American Civil Rights era.  The last events reflected the fact that we are still here.

One question by the non-Chinese student from Minnesota had to do with renaming parks in Minneapolis to reflect the Native Americans who still live in the city.  Another had to do with voting rights for Native Americans in the U.S.  The answers to both questions affirmed the "renaming" as Stanford this fall (2018) decided, with insistence from Native American students, that Juniper Serra be renamed on campus (road could not be as it is a county road) but the Serra Mall will be renamed to Jane Stanford Mall.  With regard to voting rights, in her home state of South Dakota the voters are very young.  The majority of the population on the Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota is close to the age of 18.  These young voters have elected the youngest (2nd youngest) tribal president at Pine Ridge (age 31).  They have also elected two state representatives in South Dakota.  Nationally we have two women representatives going to the House of Representatives this year (Democrats).

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Want to know what it's like to spend a quarter in China? Check out a blog post from a Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy (MIP) student.

People who are acquainted with the work of Shorenstein APARC’s Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) may be aware of the Innovation for Healthy Aging collaborative research project led by APARC Deputy Director and AHPP Director Karen Eggleston. This project, which identifies and analyzes productive public-private partnerships advancing healthy aging solutions in East Asia and other regions, encompasses an upcoming volume, co-authored by Eggleston with Harvard University professors Richard Zeckhauser and John Donohue, about public and private roles in governance of multiple sectors in China and the United States, including health care and elderly care. This volume, however, is not the first collaboration between Eggleston and Zeckhauser.

Zeckhauser, the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, is known for his many policy investigations that explore ways to promote the health of human beings, to help markets work more effectively, and to foster informed and appropriate choices by individuals and government agencies. In 2006, Eggleston and Zeckhauser co-wrote a paper about antibiotic resistance as a global threat, an issue that has since received much attention as it has become a critical public health and public policy challenge. Zeckhauser was a pioneer in framing antibiotic resistance as a global threat.

On October 20, 2018, Eggleston was among some 150 colleagues, students, and friends who participated in a special symposium at the Kennedy School to celebrate Zeckhauser’s 50th anniversary of teaching and research, and to anticipate what the next 50 years might bring in the multiple fields he has influenced throughout his long career.

Eggleston joined the first of two panels in that symposium, where she spoke about Zeckhauser’s impact on health policy and about what academics and policymakers should be tackling next on the path to addressing the global threat of antibiotic resistance.

The panel was moderated by Harvard Professor Edward Glaeser. In addition to Eggleston, it included Jeffrey Liebman, Daniel Schrag, and Cass Sunstein.

A video recording of the panel is made available by the Kennedy School. Listen to Eggleston’s remarks (beginning at the 8:42 and 36:20 time marks):

As Stanford’s fall quarter draws to a close, the first cohort of students who are participating in Freeman Spogli Institute’s (FSI) inaugural overseas program in Beijing embarked on their final field excursion. The 8 students and 4 Stanford faculty traveled first to Jinan city (济南) (capital of Shandong province), then to Zouping county (邹平), both located in China’s eastern region of Shandong (山东).

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Stanford China Studies in Beijing students and faculty being greeted by their hosts in Jinan, Shandong

Three Stanford Master’s in International Policy students and 5 undergraduate students are participating in this pilot program in Beijing at the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU). The pilot program is being offered by FSl in cooperation with Peking University. Details regarding student activities, reflections and earlier travels can be found here.

This third and final trip was significant not only for the wide-ranging sites that the students saw, but also because Zouping County has a storied connection to the wider community of China scholars in the U.S. and to Stanford. Zouping county was the first rural site in China where foreign scholars were given official access to conduct field research in the 1980’s after Deng Xiaoping’s Opening and Reform in 1978. The late Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938-2001), senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC and FSl, who also served as a key member of the U.S. National Security Council under President Jimmy Carter, spearheaded this effort, which brought over eighty U.S. academics to the area between 1984 and 1991 (For more details re. that history, please see here).

The students’ field trip included visits with those at the top of the official pyramid to the village grassroots, including meetings with the Mayor and Vice Mayor of Jinan (pop: 6.8 million) and City Planning officials there; plus local city officials in Zouping County. Students and faculty viewed urban plans for the Jinan International Medical and Science Center and toured the corporate conglomerate, Shandong Weiqiao Pioneer Group (山东魏橋创业集团有限公司) that owns the largest textile factory in the world; and Xiwang Group, Ltd. (西王集团有限公司) whose main lines of business are corn oil production and structural steel. In some ways, the site visits reminded one of China’s economic rise as the manufacturing hub of the world; and its beckoning future as a science and technology giant.

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China Studies in Beijing students and faculty viewing plans for the Jinan International Medical and Science Center

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(From left to right): Students -- Drew Hasson (MIP second year student); Lucas Hornsby (sophomore); Isaac Kipust (junior); Jenn Hu (sophomore); and Cathy Dao (sophomore) – and Stanford faculty meeting with Mayor and Vice Mayor of Jinan city

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(From front, left to back, right): Profs. Jean Oi, Andrew Walder, Scott Rozelle, Tom Fingar stop by at the company store inside Xiwang Group

A highlight of the trip also included the village of Wangjing, Linchi Township, also in Zouping County. Surrounded by village children, mixing with residents and exchanging high-fives with “the kids [and] the grandmothers, ” Stanford students got a chance to enter ordinary homes and see what village life is like in one (albeit affluent and well-developed) township of Linchi.

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Professor Scott Rozelle, joined by Isaac Kipust, Lucas Hornsy and Prof. Tom Fingar, engage with village residents of Wangjing

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Drew Hasson exchanging high-fives with the residents of Wangjing village

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Students and faculty crowded into a village's home

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Isaac Kipust playing with the villager's son

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Three boys from Wangjing village with Isaac Kipust and Prof. Scott Rozelle

By the village square, Professor Scott Rozelle even took the opportunity to challenge two village boys to strive for not only a college degree, but a graduate degree; and not just an M.A. but a Ph.D. – and not just at any university, but at Stanford University! One day, perhaps – who knows? – Stanford may find itself conferring a doctoral degree to a student who calls Wangjing village his home.

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What’s an M.A.? Not higher than a Ph.D.! Prof. Scott Rozelle in conversation with two village boys in the town square at Wangjing

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And the laughing continues . . .

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Scott Rozelle in conversation with the boys as Profs. Jean Oi and Andrew Walder look on

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All the students, faculty and residents of Wangjing village, Zouping county, gather for the final photo

Students have gone on three field trips during the course of this overseas program – an excursion to the Great Wall at Jinshanling and to Chengde, a “mountain resort” of the Qing Dynasty court; China’s Northeast region, including to the cities of Dalian, Dandong and Jinzhou (see report here); and, now, Shandong province to China’s east. In addition to these field trips, students have also had unparalleled access to speakers from China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which operates directly under China’s State Council; prominent venture capitalistsand start-up entrepreneurs; and executives from large Chinese multinationals. Students have also enjoyed visits to China’s Foreign Ministry for discussions with experts on U.S.-China relations; as well as to the U.S. Embassy, engaging in discussions with its staff on U.S.-China trade tensions and geopolitical relations.  Students have not only accessed the halls of power in China, however, but have also visited peri-urban migrant communities and schools for children of migrant workers.

The China Studies in Beijing Program lasts the length of an academic quarterat Stanford – i.e., a mere eleven weeks – and yet it provided diverse opportunities for students to explore multiple facets of this complex and kaleidoscopic nation – from officialdom to ordinary villages; Beijing’s high-tech entrepreneurs to migrant children; international relations experts to corporate executives at China’s MNCs. Even while taking intensive courses taught by leading Stanford scholars on China’s economy, society, international relations and politics, students also enjoyed weekly brown-bag seminars led by guest speakers who spoke on the current state of U.S.-China relations; China-North Korea trade; U.S.-China military competition; China’s growing middle class; and the country’s severe urban-rural divide.

Pending final university approval, the application page for China Studies in Beijing’s Fall 2019 program will open soon. Please stay tuned for more information here or email Patrick Laboon, FSI’s Academic Program Manager, at plaboon@stanford.edu for updates. We anticipate the due date for candidate statement of interest and application to be set for the end of January.

Last month, He Jiankui, a Chinese researcher, announced the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies, whose DNA had been edited to reduce the risk of HIV infection. While the claim has not yet been verified, Chinese authorities have launched an investigation and ordered this researcher’s work to stop. In the discussion that follows, Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely, an expert in the ethical, legal, and social implications of new biomedical technologies, and a Stanford Health Policy Fellow, discusses the legal and ethical questions surrounding the new world of gene-editing.

First, can you explain what the Chinese researcher, He Jiankui, did?

I’ll try but, first, we don’t know whether He Jiankui** did anything except make YouTube videos and give a talk. There has been no independent verification that these babies exist, let alone that he edited their genes. It would be a very bold fraud, but bold frauds have been carried out before in bioscience, including, notably, Hwang Woo-Suk’s false claim in 2004-05 that he had successfully cloned human embryos.

Assuming He Jiankui did what he said he did, he used a fantastic new DNA editing tool called CRISPR (“Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats”) in human embryos very shortly after the eggs were fertilized. His goal was to change a gene called CCR5. This gene makes a protein that sits on the outside of some our white blood cells, crucial to the immune system, called T cells. There is good evidence that T cells that lack CCR5 cannot be (or cannot easily be) infected with HIV; about 1% of Northern Europeans (and a smaller percentage of people elsewhere) have a particular change in their CCR5 gene that deleted 32 base pairs (“letters”) in the DNA sequence and they do not seem to get HIV infections. So, his stated goal was to provide these embryos (and the babies, teenagers, and adults they turn into) with immunity from HIV infection. The data he released, however, shows that one of the twins only had half of her cells modified. If half of her T cells have CCR5, she could still be HIV infected. The other twin had all of her cells changed but not in the way He Jiankui intended, and not in the way found in people. We have no idea whether she will be immune, wholly or partially, from HIV infection.

Is it legal in the U.S.—or anywhere? If not, why?

It is not legal in the U.S. The FDA takes the position, which I think courts would most likely uphold, that genetically altered human embryos are either drugs or biological products (or both) and so under its jurisdiction. It is illegal—a federal crime—to distribute a new drug without FDA approval. The FDA has not approved genome editing for embryos for clinical use. For research uses only, you can get FDA permission more easily. You need to submit an application to the FDA for what’s called an Investigation New Drug (IND) exemption. You need to show the FDA that there is good reason, based on non-human research, that this will not be too risky for the research participants and that there is a reasonable chance it will be effective. His work would not satisfy either side of this and so would not get an IND.

But that’s not relevant right now because since December 2015 Congress has regularly added an amendment to the FDA’s funding bill, prohibiting it from even considering any application, of any kind, for human germline editing. So, if you did this in the US now, you’d be doing it without FDA approval, which would make your use an illegal distribution of a new drug.

In many other countries, particularly in Europe, any germline human genome editing is illegal by specific statute (which it is not in the U.S.). In most countries there is no law on this—many poor countries have other things to worry about—so it is legal (at least, not specifically illegal) in most countries.

What are the dangers? What are the potential benefits?

One danger to the children is that CRISPR might have caused damage to other parts of their DNA. These so-called off-target effects are fairly common when CRISPR is used. In addition to changes in other parts of the genome, we know that He Jiankui did not accurately make the changes he aimed for in the CCR5 gene; it’s possible that the He Jiankui-modified gene would not only be ineffective at preventing HIV but affirmatively harmful.

A second danger is that life without a working CCR5 gene may have its own problems. The Northern Europeans without it include adults and appear healthy but they haven’t been closely followed to see if they are at higher risk for other problems. There is some early evidence, for example, that they might be more susceptible to West Nile Virus and influenza.

The potential benefit to the babies is HIV immunity but it is of very little weight. One twin cannot be immune because half of her cells have CCR5. The other may not be immune. And both are “saved” from the possibility, probably small, that they would become infected after being exposed to HIV (probably several decades in the future). HIV is already a manageable disease (though certainly not fun); we have no idea how easily preventable or treatable it may be in 20 years.

The potential benefit to science/medicine is showing that CRISPR’d babies can be born but if that is worth establishing, it could and should be done in a different setting, with an embryo with a very serious disease for which no good alternative exists.

When might it become legal? 

It could become legal any time Congress lets the appropriations rider lapse (next fall) and FDA decided there was enough safety information to allow it to proceed. I expect that neither of those will happen anytime soon.

When/if it does, would it be governed or overseen by an international organization? How might it be regulated? 

Highly unlikely. In the U.S. it will be overseen by FDA and local IRBs. Not perfect but not terrible.

What are the ethical challenges we’ll face when it does become legal?

For me, really not much. The safety issues for the kids are key. Apart from that, based on our current knowledge of human genetics, there are very few situations where gene editing in embryos will be better than embryo selection. We don’t know enough to make super babies and are unlikely to anytime soon. For some people doing any genetic editing that could pass down to future generations is itself a major ethical issue, a “line in the sand” we should not pass. As I have written elsewhere, I don’t think that’s right. See https://leapsmag.com/much-ado-about-nothing-much-crispr-for-human-embryo-editing/

What legal issues do you anticipate?

If this is tried before it is legal, I would expect federal criminal charges against the clinics/scientists. That might raise the question of whether a gene-modified human embryo really is a drug or biological device for purposes of FDA law. If this is tried after it is legal and it goes wrong, big malpractice suits. If it gets used under appropriate regulation, not much.

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Hank Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences, Professor (by courtesy) of Genetics, Stanford School of Medicine, Chair of the Steering Committee of the Center for Biomedical Ethics. And Director of the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society.

** He Jiankui was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford in the laboratory of Prof. Stephen Quake from January 2011 to January 2012. His work in the Quake lab focused on computational analysis and was in no way related to gene-editing.