A three-day International Summit on Human Gene Editing, held this week in Washington, D.C., wrapped up with a statement on human gene-editing, agreeing to proceed with gene editing research and application going forward, but with cautious steps.
Jointly organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine, and the UK Royal Society, the meeting drew more than 200 representatives from 22 countries.
The statement addresses several major scientific and ethical questions about the future of gene editing and calls on the national academies responsible for co-hosting the summit to establish an ongoing international forum for the continued discussion of these issues.
While gene editing has high potential for medical uses, there’s widespread concern about its safety and ethical implications. So far, the practice has been researched in a variety of different organisms, such as mice, but has only been used for a few human clinical applications, including research on creating HIV-immunity in human cells.
The statement released Thursday “isn’t an attempt at summarizing the meeting, but rather is conclusions that we’ve reached as a group,” said summit chair David Baltimore, virologist at the California Institute of Technology, during the statement’s presentation at the summit, adding, “We do not expect the plenary as a group to agree to this or not agree to it.”
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