Call for moratorium on hereditable human gene editing

A global moratorium on editing human DNA to make genetically modified children has been demanded by some of the world’s leading experts in the field.

Specialists including Emmanuelle Charpentier, Eric Lander and Feng Zhang, wrote in Nature on 13 March that previous statements cautioning against such work were not enough to stop biologist He Jiankui from reporting that he had edited embryos to create at least two modified children.

“By ‘global moratorium’, we do not mean a permanent ban. Rather, we call for the establishment of an international framework in which nations…voluntarily commit to not approve any use of clinical germline editing unless certain conditions are met,” say the authors.