Mapping the 'Ethical' Controversy of Human Heritable Genome Editing: a Multidisciplinary Approach.

ABSTRACT: Genome editing, for instance by CRISPR-Cas, is a major advancement of the last 10 years in medicine but questions ethically our practices. In particular, human embryo heritable genome editing is a source of great controversy. We explored how this ethical question was debated in the literature from PubMed database, in a period of 4 years (2016-2020) around the announcement of the 'CRISPR babies' Chinese experiment in November 2018. We evaluated the weight of the arguments for and against this topic, through an analysis of reviews published on this question. The most important arguments come from the technical perspective: safety issues and benefits, putative long-term effects on the future generations and the need to assess this aspect. Next, foreseeable clinical benefits and the alternativ

SUBMITTER: Pougnet R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10076464 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature