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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Preparing for the Next Generation of Ethical Challenges Concerning Heritable Human Genome Editing

Robert Klitzman
The American Journal of Bioethics
(2021) Volume 21 (6), 1-4.

Here is the conclusion

Moving Forward

Policymakers will thus need to make complex and nuanced risk/benefit calculations regarding costs and extents of treatments, ages of onset, severity of symptoms, degrees of genetic penetrance, disease prevalence, future scientific benefits, research costs, appropriate allocations of limited resources, and questions of who should pay.

Future efforts should thus consider examining scientific and ethical challenges in closer conjunction, not separated off, and bring together the respective strengths of the Commission’s and of the WHO Committee’s approaches. The WHO Committee includes broader stakeholders, but does not yet appear to have drawn conclusions regarding such specific medical and scientific scenarios (WHO 2020). These two groups’ respective memberships also differ in instructive ways that can mutually inform future deliberations. Among the Commission’s 18 chairs and members, only two appear to work primarily in ethics or policy; the majority are scientists (National Academy of Medicine, the National Academies of Sciences and the Royal Society 2020). In contrast, the WHO Committee includes two chairs and 16 members, with both chairs and the majority of members working primarily in ethics, policy or law (WHO 2020). ASRM and other countries’ relevant professional organizations should also stipulate that physicians and healthcare professionals should not be involved in any way in the care of patients using germline editing abroad.

The Commission’s Report thus provides valuable insights and guidelines, but multiple stakeholders will likely soon confront additional, complex dilemmas involving interplays of both science and ethics that also need urgent attention.