Will gene editing create designer babies?

Photo Credit:sciencedaily.com

"On Feb. 1, Britain's fertility regulator approved the country's first research application to use a new gene editing technique known as Crispr on human embryos.

This general research, which aims to do nothing more than provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life—it is illegal to implant the modified embryos into a woman—has invited debate at all levels concerning whether this move opens the door to "designer babies."

To help sort through this debate, we sat down with Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health.

What are the good intentions behind new gene editing research?

First, it is important to recognize that what is happening here is not a genetic modification of an embryo for the purposes of producing a child—the hope here is to understand how gene editing plays out in a human being and whether one day we're going to be able to use gene editing to cure incurable diseases like Tay-Sachs and perhaps cystic fibrosis through the modification of genes.

In addition to that, we might be able to use gene editing as a research tool to simply learn more about these diseases. All of that is exciting from a scientific perspective and it is potentially exciting from a therapeutic and clinical perspective.

And what comes out of Pandora's box?..."

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