Expert panel warns against pursuit of ‘CRISPR babies’

The world is still not ready for "CRISPR babies," an international advisory panel warned yesterday, nearly two years after a pair of twins whose genomes had been CRISPR'd were born in China. The group — made up of experts from the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.’s Royal Society — cited unresolved scientific and ethical questions in its report, which also outlined steps that scientists wishing to experiment with the technology in humans ought to take. Chief among the commission's 11 recommendations is the fact germline editing — heritable changes made to the DNA of sperm, eggs or early embryos — should not proceed until CRISPR editing can make precise changes “without undesired changes in human embryos.” This commission's work will now inform work being done by a WHO group working on a framework for gene editing.