Professor Peter Visscher, from the University of Queensland, Australia, and colleagues, have prompted ethical concerns after publishing a paper in Nature. They maintain that treatment involving germline genome editing of human embryos could be done safely and effectively, and that it could still be safe and effective when many genes are changed simultaneously.
Professor Shai Carmi, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, Professor Hank Greely, from Stanford University, California, and Dr Kevin Mitchell, from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have published a response in Nature. They argue that heritable human genome editing involves considerable risk and uncertain benefits.
Nature has also published an editorial, stating: 'Although it will be some decades before human genome editing science and technologies can be applied with precision and at scale, they are on their way; this is not a hypothetical issue. The intervening time should be used wisely. Societies need to be ready, understand the upsides and the dangers, and know what to do when that time comes.'
Read further discussion of the controversy in New Scientist.