Industry Body Calls for Gene-Editing Moratorium

Untitled Document Officials of a biotechnology industry group have called for a voluntary moratorium on using new DNA-editing techniques to change the genetic characteristics of human embryos in laboratory research.

In an editorial published today by the journal Nature, Edward Lanphier, CEO of the biotechnology company Sangamo Biosciences, and four colleagues write that “scientists should agree not to modify the DNA of human reproductive cells” because it raises safety and ethical risks including the danger of “unpredictable effects on future generations.”

New gene-editing techniques, in particular one called CRISPR, have given scientists powerful and useful new ways to swap and change DNA letters inside of living cells.

Recently, some scientific teams have started to study whether CRISPR would be able to correct disease genes in future generations of people—for instance, by repairing genes during in vitro fertilization, or in eggs or sperm. The idea of such “germ line” modification would be to install healthy versions of genes, which children would be born with.

The emergence of active research around germ-line editing, which is taking place in China, at...