Why there’s an urgent need for a moratorium on gene editing
        
            By Vivek Wadhwa, 
                Washington Post
             | 09. 08. 2015
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
             
  Untitled Document 
  
 In April 2015, a paper by Chinese   scientists about their attempts   to edit the DNA of a human embryo rocked   the scientific world and set   off a furious debate. Leading scientists warned that altering the human germ line without studying the consequences     could have horrific consequences. Geneticists with good intentions could     mistakenly engineer changes in DNA that generate dangerous mutations     and cause painful deaths. Scientists — and countries — with less noble     intentions could again try to build a race of superhumans.
 
  Human   DNA is, however, merely one of many commercial targets of   ethical   concern. The DNA of every single organism — every plant, every   animal,   every bacterium — is now fair game for genetic manipulation.     We are entering an age of backyard synthetic biology that should   worry   everybody. And it is coming about because of CRISPRs: clustered     regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.
 
  Discovered   by scientists only a few years ago, CRISPRs are   elements of an ancient   system that protects bacteria and other   single-celled organisms from   viruses, acquiring immunity to them by   incorporating genetic elements   from the...
 
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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