Those CRISPR'ed human embryos? We got it right, scientists insist - STAT

Those CRISPR'ed human embryos? We got it right, scientists insist - STAT

Those CRISPR’d human embryos? We got it right, scientists insist, rejecting criticism

By SHARON BEGLEY @sxbegle

AUGUST 8, 2018

Did those scientists really genome-edit human embryos?

Remember last year, when scientists said they used CRISPR to edit out a disease-causing mutation? Leaving aside the very reasonable question of whether that’s something humanity should do, two groups of scientists now say it probably didn’t happen the way it was described.

As STAT’s Sharon Begley reports, two papers published in Nature argue that initial research didn’t provide enough evidence to conclude that the scientists had CRISPR’d out the target mutation. Instead, they suggest, CRISPR might have just clumsily deleted a whole bunch of DNA and ensnared the disease-causing mutation in the process.

But Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, who led the initial research, is standing by his conclusion, saying that his team re-tested the embryos in question and got the same results.

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