Human Embryo Editing Gets The OK—But No Superbabies

Thanks to a new set of lab techniques, scientists are learning to edit genes, cutting and pasting to remove unwanted mutations or add desirable traits. But can does not necessarily equal should—even though many labs are already doing it in animals and early-stage clinical trials on diseases like cancer and blindness.

So last year the National Academy of Sciences convened a group of researchers, ethicists, and legal scholars to figure out where the two conditions overlap—to understand the ethics of, and come up with guidelines for, methods like Crispr-Cas9 that can change people’s genetic make-up.

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