He Jiankui was planning to reveal his experiments and the birth of Lulu and Nana at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, which was to be organized at the University of Hong Kong during 27–29 November 2018. However, on 25 November 2018, Antonio Regalado, senior editor for biomedicine of MIT Technology Review, posted on the journals website about the experiment based on He Jiankuis applications for conducting clinical trial that had been posted earlier on the Chinese clinical trials registry. At the time, He refused to comment on the conditions of the pregnancy. Prompted by the publicity, He immediately posted about his experiment and the successful birth of the twins on YouTube in five videos the same day. The next day, the Associated Press made the first formal news, which was most likely a pre-written account before the publicity. His experiment had received no independent confirmation, and had not been peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal. Soon after Hes revelation, the university at which He was previously employed, the Southern University of Science and Technology, stated that Hes research was conducted outside of their campus. China's National Health Commission also ordered provincial health officials to investigate his case soon after the experiment was revealed.
Amidst the furore, He was allowed to present his research at the Hong Kong meeting on 28 November under the title "CCR5 gene editing in mouse, monkey, and human embryos using CRISPR–Cas9". During the discussion session, He asserted, "Do you see your friends or relatives who may have a disease? They need help," and continued, "For millions of families with inherited disease or infectious disease, if we have this technology we can help them." In his speech, He also mentioned a second pregnancy under the same experiment. No reports disclosed, the baby might have been born around August 2019, and the birth was affirmed on 30 December when the Chinese court returned a verdict mentioning that there were "three genetically-edited babies". The baby was later revealed in 2022 as Amy.