| Abstract: |
Our Societies consider these safety and ethical concerns to be sufficiently serious to support a strong stance against gene editing in, or gene modification of, human cells to generate viable human zygotes with heritable germ-line modifications. Even with technical advances that may eventually solve the safety and mosaicism problems, our Societies conclude that there are not ethically acceptable ways to conduct embryonic gene editing or other germ-line modifications because the results of such experiments are not susceptible to longterm evaluation in a scientifically reasonable time scale. For these reasons, our Societies support a strong ban on human germ-line gene editing or other germ-line genetic modification unless and until these technical and ethical problems can be solved, broadly and deeply discussed, and societal consensus reached. |
