70 Countries Ban Human Gene Editing as Public Support Grows
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- Seventy countries, including the UK, have laws banning human germline gene editing, and no country currently permits it — though most restrictions rest on safety, not broader ethical, objections
- Two new studies used base editing, a next-generation Crispr tool, on human embryos to study early development and disease, a practice legal in the UK and US provided embryos are destroyed within 14 days
- Dieter Egli, lead author of one study, said the technology isn't yet ready for clinical use but will "guide responsible research to achieve its ultimate safe and effective use"
- The Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine both hold that human germline editing is not ethically unacceptable in itself, a position bioethicist R Alta Charo says will force more fundamental questions as safety objections erode
- Ipsos polling for the Progress Educational Trust found majorities in the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands support gene editing to correct life-threatening conditions like cystic fibrosis, with plurality support for managing conditions like asthma; Italy showed plurality support on both questions
- The editorial flags that UK couples already use foreign IVF companies to screen for desirable traits (illegal domestically), and US IVF companies are collaborating with base-editing research labs, narrowing the gap between medical treatment and on-demand genetic design
Why it matters: The safety-based legal bans on germline editing across 70 countries rest on shifting ground: the Nuffield Council and US National Academies already deem it ethically acceptable, and Ipsos polling shows majority public support in the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands for medical uses. The Guardian argues regulators must now decide not whether to allow the technology, but for which purposes — before commercial IVF labs normalize non-medical applications.
