Gene Editing

The revelation in April that scientists had edited the genome of a human embryo — an inevitable development to anyone paying attention to biotechnological advances — has sparked the biggest bioethical debate of the year and one that will last for decades. The overwhelming consensus is that such embryos should not be brought to term in clinical settings — at least not for now. The debate over when, if ever, that should take place has played out in the scientific literature in duelling articles, arguments about the technology’s efficacy and calls for an Asilomar-like conference on bioethics.

So it is little surprise that lawmakers are weighing in. On 16 June, a subcommittee of the US House Committee on Space, Science and Technology held a hearing on human gene editing with witnesses who included Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was one of the inventors of the genome-editing system CRISPR, and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) president Victor Dzau.

The climate was more educational than controversial, with lawmakers asking the usual questions about...