BiothreatsDo we need a moratorium on germline gene editing?

Published 20 March 2019

In the wake of the news from China about He Jiankui’s gene-edited babies, many scientists are calling for a moratorium on germline gene-editing. Nature considered the topic sufficiently important to publish the call by several top researchers and ethicists for a moratorium.

In the wake of the news from China about He Jiankui’s gene-edited babies, many scientists are calling for a moratorium on germline gene-editing. In fact, the Chinese health ministry released draft guidelines aiming to stop rogue efforts which would engage in germline editing without approval.

Pandora Report notes that Nature considered the topic sufficiently important to publish the call by several top researchers and ethicists for a moratorium.

Whether or not a moratorium receives more widespread support, several things need to be done to ensure that germline gene-editing studies, done for the purposes of research only, are on a safe and sensible path. As a starting point, proposals for all ethically vetted and approved basic research studies that use gene-editing tools in human embryos and gametes, including those aimed at assessing efficacy and safety, should be deposited in an open registry.

Second, researchers need to develop a system that allows early recognition of any research that risks overstepping predefined boundaries. A useful model to follow could be the WHO guidance for regulating research with a potential biosecurity risk. The system should include a mechanism — perhaps affiliated with the open registry — that allows researchers to flag up potentially dangerous research. Analyzing whether He’s work could have been prevented will help. It’s important to hammer out whether, how and to whom scientists and ethicists who became aware of the project could have voiced their concerns — and how they could do so more easily in future. Raising the alarm would require a change of practice for researchers who, for the sake of scientific independence, often do not intervene in the choice of research projects undertaken by their peers.

“By ‘global moratorium’, we do not mean a permanent ban,” say the writers — “rather, we call for the establishment of an international framework in which nations, while retaining the right to make their own decisions, voluntarily commit to not approve any use of clinical germline editing unless certain conditions are met.”

— Read more in Editorial, “Germline gene-editing research needs rules,” Nature (13 March 2019); Eric Lander et al., “Adopt a moratorium on heritable genome editing,” Nature (13 March 2019); and G. Owen Schaefer, “A case against a moratorium on germline gene editing,” The Conversation (20 March 2019)