Thursday’s report comes nearly two years after a Chinese scientist shocked the world by revealing he’d helped make the first gene-edited babies using a tool called CRISPR, which enables DNA changes or “edits” that can pass to future generations. He Jianqui did this to three babies when they were embryos to try to make them resistant to infection with the AIDS virus and described it in exclusive interviews.
Mainstream scientists condemned his experiment as unethical, and He was sentenced to three years in prison for violating Chinese laws. The experts commission was formed in the aftermath by the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the United Kingdom’s Royal Society.
The group doesn’t take a stance on whether editing embryos is ethical, just whether it’s ready scientifically -- and deems that it’s not. A separate panel formed by the World Health Organization is to report on ethics issues later this year.
The commission does say that if a country allows this, it should be limited to cases where people have no or very poor options for having a child without the disease. Initial attempts should be for serious diseases caused by a single gene, such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, the blood disorder beta thalassemia and Tay-Sachs, a neurological disease, the report says.
Altering genes to try to enhance traits such as muscle mass or height is not endorsed.
This story is from the Techlife News #462 edition of Techlife News.
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This story is from the Techlife News #462 edition of Techlife News.
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