COMMENTARY: Why is this latest development generally being hailed as a scientific milestone rather than a giant ethical violation?
Recent biomedical news headlines have exposed the deadly lack of ethics in research involving human embryos. Dr. Dieter Egli, a Columbia University developmental cell biologist, claims his team successfully “base edited” the genome of several human embryos. Why is this generally being hailed as a scientific milestone rather than a giant ethical violation, as happened when Dr. He Jiankui similarly performed germ-line gene editing of embryos in 2018?
Egli, unlike He, had no surviving embryos after his experiments ended. I believe this says it all.
Human embryos are treated as intensely interesting entities available for every sort of deadly manipulation, but the one unforgivable sin of human embryonic research is to allow the subjects to live.
He Jiankui used the much less precise CRISPR-Cas9 technique, which in other experiments damaged or deleted entire chromosomes unintentionally. Three girls subjected to his gene editing interventions survived to birth. His actions led to an international outcry, and consensus grew among scientists that CRISPR gene manipulation of embryos could not be done reliably and safely.
The embarrassed government of China condemned him to three
