Drafting 'designer babies' manual



The US's National Academy of Sciences is to convene a meeting of the world's scientists and "ethicists" to formulate guidelines for the exploitation of a new technology that could create "designer babies". The technology, CRISPR-Cas9, allows scientists to edit virtually any gene they target. The technique is akin to a word-processing computer program, but now the defects that are found and replaced are in genes, not documents.The technique has taken biology by storm, igniting fierce patent battles between start-up companies and universities. It is likely to be as profitable and revolutionary as the recombinant DNA technology developed in the 1970s and 1980s that launched the biotech industry and revolutionised the production of many pharmaceuticals.Last month scientists in China reported carrying out the first experiment using CRISPR gene-editing to alter the DNA of non-viable human embryos.The National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine will convene an international summit later this year at which "the scientific, ethical, and policy issues associated with human gene-editing research" will be discussed.In addition, the academy, which is frequently commissioned to undertake science studies for the US federal government and others, will appoint a multidisciplinary, international committee to study the scientific basis and the ethical, legal, and social implications of human gene editing."We are prepared to work with the scientific and medical communities to achieve a comprehensive understanding of human gene editing and its implications, " NAS president Ralph Cicerone said.The academy was similarly involved in formulating guidelines for DNA manipulation.