Britian has jumped the gun on gene editing
By Donna Dickenson,
Telegraph [UK]
| 02. 02. 2016
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For the first time Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has granted researchers permission to use a new “gene editing” technique called Crispr/Cas9 to modify human embryos. This is despite a global summit held last December by the National Academies of Science in Washington which warned that, when it comes to this powerful new technique, no nation should go it alone. Other countries such as the United States are just as advanced as Britain in gene editing – indeed, the techniques authorised by HFEA were partly developed in America. But these nations are, rightly, being more cautious in using it.
Why? Their objections do not rest on religion or Luddite opposition to new technology. And it is not gene editing per se – they have fewer concerns about the technique’s use to correct genetic problems in individual living patients. But around the world, expert scientists and bioethicists are worried about its use to modify human embryos. If such embryos are reimplanted in the womb and born, genetic modifications would not be confined to them, but passed down...
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