Aggregated News
A West Coast biotech entrepreneur says he’s secured $30 million to form a public-benefit company to study how to safely create genetically edited babies, marking the largest known investment into the taboo technology.
The new company, called Preventive, is being formed to research so-called “heritable genome editing,” in which the DNA of embryos would be modified by correcting harmful mutations or installing beneficial genes. The goal would be to prevent disease.
Preventive was founded by the gene-editing scientist Lucas Harrington, who described his plans yesterday in a blog post announcing the venture. Preventive, he said, will not rush to try out the technique but instead will dedicate itself “to rigorously researching whether heritable genome editing can be done safely and responsibly.”
Creating genetically edited humans remains controversial, and the first scientist to do it, in China, was imprisoned for three years. The procedure remains illegal in many countries, including the US, and doubts surround its usefulness as a form of medicine.
Still, as gene-editing technology races forward, the temptation to shape the future of the species may prove...
