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There should be a global moratorium on editing heritable DNA from humans, scientists and bioethicists from seven countries write today (March 13) in a Nature commentary. The US National Academy of Medicine, the US National Academy of Science, the UK Royal Society, London, and the National Institutes of Health support the call for prohibiting such editing until an international framework on the technique’s use can be established.
“We all believe that we shouldn’t be going forward,” Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and coauthor of the commentary, tells NPR. “And starting off by saying we should have a moratorium brings an important clarity to the thing.”
Editing heritable DNA, or germline editing, involves using CRISPR-Cas9 or other methods to tweak the genetic code of sperm, eggs, or embryos with the goal being to make genetically modified children. The proposed moratorium does ...
