Scientists urged to ban the editing of the embryo genome

Two developers of the CRISPR / Cas genome editing technology, Feng Zhang and Emmanuel Charpentier, advocated a moratorium on its use in experiments on human embryos for the birth of children without hereditary diseases. Their statement is published by the journal Nature Research.

The reason for this reaction was the experiment of the scientist He Jiankuya, who changed the CCR5 gene to the twins Nane and Lulu. According to him, such an intervention should forever make them resistant to HIV infection, which was diagnosed in their father. Jiu Nanping, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology of China, said that he was shocked by the news about the experiment, since they had been banned in the country since 2003.

The creators of CRISPR / Cas and sixteen more scientists from different countries supported the idea of introducing a moratorium on such experiments for five years. During this time, in their opinion, it is necessary to create an expert commission of representatives of several states, which in the future will monitor the conduct of experiments on the genome. However, they do not intend to interfere with the research and editing of cells in non-viable embryos.

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