{"id":170679,"date":"2017-08-21T14:46:04","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T18:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=170679"},"modified":"2017-08-21T15:06:10","modified_gmt":"2017-08-21T19:06:10","slug":"progress-or-discrimination-why-we-should-question-ethics-gene-editing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/progress-or-discrimination-why-we-should-question-ethics-gene-editing\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Progress’ or discrimination? Why we should question the ethics of gene editing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Recently, controversy erupted after scientists announced that they had successfully altered human genes with the intent of eradicating some genetic health conditions. What made this controversial is the fact that scientists were creating embryos — human lives — solely to experiment on them, and then destroy them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the three lead authors of a policy statement recommending that such research into editing human genes continues — published in the American Journal of Human Genetics — was interviewed by Medical Xpress<\/a>. Kelly Ormond, MS, professor of genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine, spoke about the process and about why the statement was released now, as well as some of the ethical concerns surrounding the research.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been able to alter genes for many years now, but the new techniques, such as CRISPR\/Cas9, that have come out in the past five years have made it a lot easier, and things are moving fast. It’s now quite realistic to do human germline gene editing, and some people have been calling for a moratorium on such work,” she explained. “Our organization, the American Society of Human Genetics, decided that it would be important to investigate the ethical issues and put out a statement regarding germline genome editing, and what we thought should happen in the near term moving forward.”<\/p>\n