Category Archives: Transhuman News

Gene-editing companies say research on altering the DNA of human reproductive cells is dangerous and unethical.

Officials of a biotechnology industry group have called for a voluntary moratorium on using new DNA-editing techniques to change the genetic characteristics of human embryos in laboratory research.

In an editorial published today by the journal Nature, Edward Lanphier, CEO of the biotechnology company Sangamo Biosciences, and four colleagues write that scientists should agree not to modify the DNA of human reproductive cells because it raises safety and ethical risks including the danger of unpredictable effects on future generations.

New gene-editing techniques, in particular one called CRISPR, have given scientists powerful and useful new ways to swap and change DNA letters inside of living cells for the first time (see Genome Surgery).

Recently, some scientific teams have started to study whether CRISPR would be able to correct disease genes in future generations of peoplefor instance, by repairing genes during in vitro fertilization, or in eggs or sperm. The idea of such germ line modification would be to install healthy versions of genes, which children would be born with.

The emergence of active research around germ-line editing, which is taking place in China, at Harvard University, and at a publicly traded biotechnology company called OvaScience, were described last week by MIT Technology Review (see Engineering the Perfect Baby).

But the idea of using editing technology to improve children is as controversial as it is medically powerful. In their editorial, Lanphier, whose coauthors include Fyodor Urnov, co-developer of a different gene-editing system, raise the concern that such techniques might be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications. That could mean, for instance, changing the physical traits of children.

The availability of technology to carry out genetic engineering in human germ-line cells is driving intense debate in scientific circles and may eventually become a legal issue in the United States and other countries.

The authors call for a cessation of basic research is unusual and likely to be opposed by scientists as an intrusion on the quest for scientific knowledge.

George Church, a professor at Harvard Medical School whose laboratory studies CRISPR and germ-line editing, says a voluntary moratorium would be weak compared with existing regulations that nearly all countries impose on the use of new medical technologies until they are proven safe and effective in animals or human [tests]. Church was referring to rules governing the birth of actual gene-edited children, not basic research.

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Industry Body Calls for Gene-Editing Moratorium

A call by scientists to halt to precision gene-editing of DNA in human embryos would allow time to work out safety and ethical issues

Sperm cell fertilizing an egg. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Amid rumors that precision gene-editing techniques have been used to modify the DNA of human embryos, researchers have called for a moratorium on the use of the technology in reproductive cells.

In a Comment published on March 12 inNature, Edward Lanphier, chairman of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine in Washington DC, and four co-authors call on scientists to agree not to modify human embryos even for research.

Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications. We are concerned that a public outcry about such an ethical breach could hinder a promising area of therapeutic development, write Lanphier and his colleagues, who include Fyodor Urnov, a pioneer in gene-editing techniques and scientist at Sangamo BioSciences in Richmond, California. Many groups, including Urnov's company, are already using gene-editing tools to develop therapies that correct genetic defects in people (such as by editing white blood cells). They fear that attempts to produce designer babies by applying the methods to embryos will create a backlash against all use of the technology.

Known as germline modification, edits to embryos, eggs or sperm are of particular concern because a person created using such cells would have had their genetic make-up changed without consent, and would permanently pass down that change to future generations.

We need a halt on anything that approaches germline editing in human embryos, Lanphier, who is also chief executive of Sangamo, toldNatures news team.

But other scientists disagree with that stance. Although there needs to be a wide discussion of the safety and ethics of editing embryos and reproductive cells, they say, the potential to eliminate inherited diseases means that scientists should pursue research.

Related trials Geneticist Xingxu Huang of ShanghaiTech University in China, for example, is currently seeking permission from his institutions ethics committee to try genetically modifying discarded human embryos. In February 2014, he reportedusing a gene-editing technique to modify embryos that developed into live monkeys. Human embryos would not be allowed to develop to full term in his experiments, but the technique gives lots of potential for its application in humans, he says.

Besides Huangs work, gene-editing techniques are also being used by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a developmental biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, to eliminate disease-causing mutations from mitochondria, the cell's energy-processing structures. Belmonte's work is on unfertilized eggs; human eggs with such modified mitochondria could one day be used inin vitrofertilization (IVF) procedures to prevent a woman's offspring from inheriting mitochondrial disease.

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DNA Editing of Human Embryos Alarms Scientists