Jon CohenNo recent biomedical experiment has caused more consternation than He Jiankui’s creation of the first gene-edited babies, in 2018, which was widely seen as dangerous, unethical, and premature—and which led to his incarceration by China.
Now, an international committee has concluded that gene-editing methods, despite substantial improvements, are still far from mature enough to safely introduce heritable DNA modifications into human embryos.But they might be one day, in rare circumstances, adds the panel, calling for the formation of a global scientific body that would review proposals for what it calls “heritable human genome editing” (HHGE) and try to influence whether countries decide to allow its use.