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Wednesday, July 31, 2019

US Senators Call for International Guidelines for Germline Editing

Jef Akst
www.the-scientist.com
Originally published July 16, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

“Gene editing is a powerful technology that has the potential to lead to new therapies for devastating and previously untreatable diseases,” Feinstein says in a statement. “However, like any new technology, there is potential for misuse. The international community must establish standards for gene-editing research to develop global ethical principles and prevent unethical researchers from moving to whichever country has the loosest regulations.” (Editing embryos for reproductive purposes is already illegal in the US.)

In addition, the resolution makes clear that the trio of senators “opposes the experiments that resulted in pregnancies using genome-edited human embryos”—referring to the revelation last fall that researcher He Jiankui had CRISPRed the genomes of two babies born in China.

The info is here.