These are the Countries Where it's 'Legal' to Edit Human Embryos (Hint: the US is One)
By Lauren F Friedman,
Business Insider
| 04. 23. 2015
News broke on Wednesday that a team of Chinese scientists had edited the genes of human embryos for the first time ever, confirming long-swirling rumors that such ethically dicey experiments were underway and flouting recent calls to put a stop to them.
Around the world, the laws governing what's allowed when it comes to "editing the human germ line," the technical name for what the Chinese scientists did, are a mixed bag. That means that while the technology still has a long way to go before people can actually make genetically engineered babies, in many places there are no laws preventing a scary "Gattaca scenario," where designer babies become routine — just some loose guidelines and a variable sense of ethics.
Despite researchers urging caution — stating that this work needs to be "on hold pending a broader societal discussion of the scientific and ethical issues surrounding such use," an inventor of the technology that made it possible told National Geographic — it seems that while the Chinese scientists ruffled some feathers, they did not actually break...
Related Articles
By Megan Molteni and Anil Oza, STAT | 10.07.2025
For two years, a panel of scientific experts, clinicians, and patient advocates had been hammering out ways to increase community engagement in National Institutes of Health-funded science. When they presented their road map to the NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya last...
By Shoumita Dasgupta, STAT | 10.03.2025
President Trump and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have characterized the rise in autism diagnoses in recent years as an epidemic requiring emergency intervention.
This approach is factually wrong: The broadening definition of autism and the improvement in diagnosis...
By Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025
We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as goes a line in Wallace O. Chariton’s Texas dictionary This Dog’ll Hunt. Lately, I’ve been wondering what this ethos...
By Émile P. Torres, Truthdig | 10.17.2025
The Internet philosopher Eliezer Yudkowsky has been predicting the end of the world for decades. In 1996, he confidently declared that the singularity — the moment at which computers become more “intelligent” than humanity — would happen in 2021, though...