The university has publicly denied reports of the detainment, but staff and He's business partner Liu Chaoyu confirmed his presence.

He's fate remains unclear. There are still concerns about the honesty of the gene editing experiment, let alone its authenticity. The scientific community has accused He of giving patients a deceptive consent form (they were told it was an AIDS vaccine trial, not genetic modification). He had promised "raw data" for review, but that never came to pass. Right now, there's no way to verify the procedure or its long-term effectiveness. Even if the government hadn't already raised moral objections to He's claims, it would still have significant issues with his practices.