With the development of technology and science hand in hand, gene editing technology, which we know as CRISPR, entered our lives. In fact, a personalized cancer treatment was performed with CRISPR in the past months.
But CRISPR isn’t limited to just that. Even the embryo of an unborn baby can be gene-edited with CRISPR to make it smarter and blue-eyed. Of course, this is not yet applied in the scientific world for ethical reasons. Today, an important announcement has come about this potential.
Gene editing in unborn babies has been closed for now:
The 2023 Human Genome Editing Summit, which was held in the past days, ended with a critical announcement for the scientific world. The organizing committee of the summit included a statement banning the use of CRISPR on babies “for now”:
“Heritable human genome editing (editing of embryos’ genes) remains unacceptable today. Public debates and policy debates are ongoing, and these are important for deciding whether to use the technology.
Governance frameworks and ethical principles for the responsible use of inherited human genome editing are lacking. The required safety and efficacy standards have not been met.”
One of the discussions that led to this decision was also seen at the event:
On the day the summit started, members of a group called “Stop Designer Babies” held a protest in front of the summit center to stop editing the human gene. The group argued that if gene editing were accepted, the world would move towards ‘eugenics’, first introduced by Plato.
The idea of gene editing in embryos caused a great stir when a Chinese scientist explained in 2018:
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