Tag Archives: heritable editing

Edited and polyselected babies: what’s going on?

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An investigation by The Wall Street Journal has looked into Silicon Valley companies pushing the most controversial frontiers of assisted reproduction. It combines two rather different themes. Number one: the production of numerous embryos from which to choose based on a polygenic score that includes predispositions to hundreds of diseases and even a handful of desirable non-medical traits. Number two: gene-editing of embryos (also known as heritable or germline editing), which we’ve discussed many times since the case of the CRISPR babies in China and which now seems to be gaining new ground (the most talked-about company in this field is called Preventive).

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Chronicles from the London editing summit

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CRISPR patient Victoria Gray talking at the summit (credit The Royal Society)

The third – and perhaps final – act of the Human Genome Editing Initiative ended last week. The first summit (Washington 2015) was held amid enthusiasm for the invention of CRISPR, with the aim of fostering a constructive dialogue between science and society. The second edition (Hong Kong 2018) was dominated by the birth in China of the first edited human beings. The main points in the agenda of geneticists and bioethicists meeting a few days ago (London 2023) was to overcome the shock and focus on the next challenges: broadening the range of treatable diseases, reducing the costs of therapies, simplifying them so they can be administered anywhere in the world, and reach as many sick people as possible.

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WHO’s roadmap on genome editing

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A multi-disciplinary panel of 18 experts from all over the world, a two years long consultation, over 150 pages. The much-awaited report of the World Health Organization on human genome editing was delivered on July 12 and is divided into three parts: A framework for governance, Recommendations, and Position Paper. While not legally binding, it is expected to influence both governments and the scientific community, by offering a roadmap based on widely shared ethical principles and usable policy tools.

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Heritable Editing: Yes or No?

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According to the survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 20 countries, people are positive about gene-editing if used to treat illnesses a baby would have at birth (support is particularly strong in Spain). People are also generally in favor of using human gene editing to reduce the risk of future health problems, but less so. India is the only country where the majority says the possibility of using human gene editing to make a baby more intelligent is also acceptable. See more data here.

Italy is a yellow spot in the heritable editing map. Why?

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Look at this map, from a detailed and up-to-date analysis published in the CRISPR Journal. It’s the global policy landscape on heritable human editing, i.e., modified embryos transferred to a uterus to initiate a pregnancy. Who would expect a catholic country like Italy to stand out as one of the very few countries not totally prohibiting such a controversial practice?

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A bold proposal and a cautious report

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Let’s imagine a hundred or more citizens from all over the globe, selected to partecipate in a giant focus group aiming to represent world views. It would be an unprecedented social experiment, that’s for sure, but the call is worth considering. The bold proposal comes from a group of social scientists and a few geneticists (George Church included) writing today in Science. Fascinating as it is, this kind of assembly is probably easier said than done. However, the main problem, in my opinion, comes next: what should experts and politicians do with the assembly’s deliberations?

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