Closely-watched international CRISPR ethics panel leaves door ajar for germline editing — one day
In 2017, some of the world’s top scientists and ethicists emerged from over a year of deliberations with a report meant to finally lay down guiding principles for how CRISPR, the awesome-power-awesome-responsibility genome editing tool, should be safely and morally used.
Then, just months later, a scientist named He Jiankui announced he had used the tool to edit embryos and create so-called “CRISPR babies.” That was baffling to the experts who universally preached caution, but so was his next claim: That he had done so while following the — in hindsight, vague — principles set out in the report.
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