Response to Levrier re: Human Germline and Heritable Genome Editing: The Global Policy Landscape
By Marcy Darnovsky, Katie Hasson, and Timothy M. Krahn,
The CRISPR Journal
| 02. 19. 2021
In response to: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/crispr.2021.29121.gle
Levrier apparently misunderstands the nature of our project published in The CRISPR Journal in October 2020.1 We identified and reviewed policy documents relevant to human germline and heritable genome editing research in 96 countries. We did not speculate about arguments that might lead legislatures or courts to revise existing policies or adjudicate prospective cases, nor did we attempt to examine each policy in its national or international context. Rather, based on close and careful readings of the identified texts, we categorized countries according to the current permissibility or impermissibility of germline and heritable genome editing. Then, we counted.
We welcome corrections and additions to the data we have compiled, which we plan to keep updated at https://tinyurl.com/HumanGenomeEditingPolicies. Unfortunately, Levrier does not provide appropriate documentation for his challenge to our categorizations regarding human germline and heritable genome editing research in three countries (France, Mexico, and Japan). Instead, he points to a report, unspecified “debates” in the French parliament, and comments on social media. We sometimes used such sources to identify relevant policy documents, but did...
Related Articles
Gray wolf by Jessica Eirich via Unsplash
“I’m not a scarcity guy, I’m an abundance guy”
– Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm, The New Yorker, 4/14/25
Even the most casual consumers of news will have seen the run of recent headlines featuring the company Colossal Biosciences. On March 4, they announced with great fanfare the world’s first-ever woolly mice, as a first step toward creating a woolly mammoth. Then they topped that on April 7 by unveiling one...
By Katrina Northrop, The Washington Post | 04.06.2025
photo via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 3.0
China's most infamous scientist is attempting a comeback. He Jiankui, who went to jail for three years after claiming he had created the world's first genetically altered babies, says he remains...
By Kevin Davies, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 03.27.2025
Around 2018–19, there was not a bigger science and ethical story than the debate over heritable human genome editing (HHGE) and the scandal over the “CRISPR babies.” The scientist, He Jiankui, who attempted to engineer the germline of human embryos...
By Megan Molteni, Stat | 03.28.2025
WASHINGTON — Keith Joung knows better than a lot of people what, exactly, it might require to prove to regulators and patients that CRISPR could be safely used to alter the genome of a human embryo. If, of course, society...