Push for Licenses to Genetically Engineer Human Beings

Push for Licenses to Genetically Engineer Human Beings
… a letter written by Julian Hitchcock of the U.K. government’s Synthetic Biology Leadership Council, published in Nature, the most prestigious science journal in the world — explicitly advocates licensing scientists to genetically engineer in the same way we do cannabis vendors!   No. We need a legally enforceable moratorium with punch for violators. Our institutions keep failing us, and the science sector is no exception

Russian biologist welcomes backlash over his plan for gene-edited babies
A Russian biologist has thrust himself to the forefront one of the world’s most urgent medical-science debates by declaring his intention to use CRISPR gene-editing techniques to modify the genomes of human embryos and implant them in women. Denis Rebrikov, a DNA-technology specialist who heads a genome-editing lab at a Moscow fertility clinic, vowed this month to seek Russian authorities’ approval to disable a gene, known as CCR5, in carefully selected embryos of would-be mothers who are HIV-positive or who suffer from specific genetic disorders