Dutch public backs human gene editing for hereditary diseases

Next government expected to consider legal changes following positive feedback on nascent area of research

The majority of more than a thousand people who took part in a huge exercise to assess public opinion in the Netherlands on the controversial area of human genome editing say they have no fundamental objections to the modification of DNA in embryos.

Human genome editing has emerged as one of the most promising but also most controversial areas in biology. Researchers in some countries have pressed ahead, modifying human embryos and in a very small number of cases claiming to have actually created genetically modified human babies.