What a nightmare in progress! Sticking tardigrade genes into human embryos isn't something I can imagine would be lawful in any jurisdiction but China today, and I didn't read of any animal trials in the article.

"What is legal and who actually decides what is legal or not legal?"

I happened to read something Xi just said three days ago:

"Xi pointed out that the Party-wide education campaign on the study and implementation of the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era with the focus on leading officials at and above the county and director level is a major initiative to implement the guiding principles of the 20th CPC National Congress. It is of great significance for the Party to achieve unity in thinking, solve prominent problems within the Party, always maintain close ties with the people, and advance the cause of the Party and the country. The education campaign should yield concrete results in the in-depth study and implementation of the Thought, guide Party members and officials to affirm and consolidate their convictions and continue to improve their capacity for political judgment, thinking, and implementation. The education campaign is meant to guide Party members and officials to become more conscious of the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, follow the leadership core, and keep in alignment with the central Party leadership, stay confident in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics, uphold Comrade Xi Jinping's core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and uphold the Central Committee's authority and its centralized, unified leadership, and closely follow the Party Central Committee in thinking, political stance, and action. In doing so, they can focus their ingenuity and energy on the same goal and come together as a mighty force to forge the Party into "one piece of adamantine iron" that is invincible. All Party members and officials need to be educated and guided to study the Thought and put what they have learned into action, foster a correct outlook on power, performance and career, enhance their sense of responsibility and mission, and constantly improve their ability to promote high-quality development, serve the people, and forestall and defuse risks. They need to be guided to strengthen the courage and ability to carry on fight, forge ahead with determination, take on responsibilities and demonstrate enterprise in their work. Efforts need to be made to educate and guide Party organizations at all levels, all Party members and officials to have a problem-oriented mindset so as to identify shortcomings and deficiencies and know what to do with them. They need to be guided to have regular political "health checks" through intra-Party activities, thereby "sweep off the dust," rectify misdeeds, and solve prominent problems of impurity in thinking and organization in the Party. They need to be guided to comprehensively advance the Party's capacity to purify, improve, renew, and excel itself. This will ensure that our Party always retains its vigor and vitality, and remains the strong leadership core in building socialism with Chinese characteristics."

https://english.news.cn/cnleaders/xistime/

Frankly, that is almost as terrifying as radiation proof GMO PLA soldiers. Perhaps not at all unexpected from the CCP and Communist China, but I couldn't put up with that kind of tacit censorship and groupthink at all.

I could never have realized just how averse I am to Communism until I read this today, and I'm quite happy I did. But the 'law' is clearly whatever Xi Jinping, China's glorious and fearless overlord, says it is in China. Kinda makes me wonder what happened to this guy, Hu Jintao. Never saw him again, or heard of any reference to him in any media source at all, since the last CCP Party Congress. Dust swept, I guess.

ForeignPolicy.com

I'd much rather face certain death in battle against hordes of irradiated, glow-in-the-dark, Chinese GMO supersoldiers than live in China under 24/7/365 total surveillance tied to a social credit score without the ability to have a single unique thought or say 'Fuck that!' without having to live under a bridge (or be executed by involuntary organ harvest, as seems to be a thing there).

"What if such a genetically modified soldier has children at some point, will this then be passed on..."

Seems to me if they altered human embryos, then they enabled that genetic alteration to be incorporated into germ cells, which create sperm (or eggs in women. However, women are born with all the eggs they'll ever produce, so only alteration of embryos can alter female germ cells and pass mutations on to their kids), and so, yes, those mutations and any negative effects would be passed down to their kids.

And that's where I think the line should be drawn: at germ cells. I don't think we should be altering the human species with the very limited understanding we have of our evolution and how most of our inconceivably complex biology actually works. Just a few years ago we discovered the largest organ in the human body, the interstitium. We never saw it before because when it's cut into, as it is to put slices of our body on slides and look at them with microscopes, it collapses into a thin film. It's only fully inflated when it's not cut, so no one saw it in microscopes. For centuries. We missed the interstitium, the largest organ in the human body, for centuries.

So, that doesn't give me any confidence at all the decision to genetically alter people, and enable them to pass down those genes, was the least bit rational, safe, or anything besides the deranged megalomania of a psychopathic evil overlord. Glad I live in America where I can still say that without forfeiting my internal organs automagically. If the Restrict Act passes, that won't be true anymore. Make sure to have a look at that pile of crap being proposed by our own glorious and fearless evil overlords, that could sentence American to 20 years hard time for using a VPN and visiting a Chinese website.

Lots of potentially hellish dystopia apparently headed our way right now.

Thanks!

Edit: I don't particularly care, but I wouldn't use the #Steem tag here again. Some folks reckon Steem stole $M's of their money, and they don't like it. Maybe you're unaware of that whole SNAFU, but if you're going to post on Hive, you shouldn't be, because that's why Hive exists. I don't care because I got my Steem out before it got stolen. Plenty of folks didn't, and they just might take it out on your tag.

Re-edit: Also, you should always provide a link to pics on Hive, like I did in this reply. And, you should provide a link someone can click on and go to your source for material that is drawn from a website. Since you're quoting them a lot, it's only common courtesy, and also it enables people like me, who is going to check to see if you're telling the truth or not, to verify your source, and evaluate it to see if I trust it.

I should have done that before I reblogged this post, but I'm in the habit of reading posts from folks that follow these rules, and I didn't even think about it until after I'd reblogged, because I believe this content is so critically important to share.

Please do include those links in articles in the future.

ReReEdit: I have managed to verify the story at the original link, and also the source for that story, which is behind a paywall at scmp.com, but is archived here:
https://archive.ph/iXFRh

In this story "The Beijing-based life scientist said Yue’s experiment was “totally legal” because it was conducted entirely with artificially cultured cell lines in a test tube."

In which case there was no effort to produce a foetus from the altered cells, and no potential for producing GMO human beings.

However "“The expression does not damage the vitality of cells, but can promote cell proliferation to a certain extent,” Yue’s team said.
“The study will move on to the next stage based on these findings.”

So, Yue plans on continuing the research, and cell proliferation was more rapid, which indicates some ontological changes in how the cells grew after the chimerization.