BioCentury
ARTICLE | Politics & Policy

U.S., Chinese academies planning meeting to set strict germline gene editing standards

December 13, 2018 7:58 PM UTC

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Medicine and Chinese Academy of Sciences plan to organize an international conference to set stricter guidelines and standards for human germline editing. The call for the meeting, which was proposed by the presidents of NAS, NAM and CAS in an editorial published in Science Thursday, comes less than three weeks after Chinese scientist Jiankui He jolted the gene editing space by announcing he had edited the CCR5 gene in human embryos that gave rise to twin girls.

He presented his work at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing on Nov. 28, unleashing a debate on ethical, regulatory and scientific questions the gene editing field has largely kept on the back burner, even as the technology has moved forward (see "Germline Editing Gets Technical")...

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