Designer babies are not a health threat, says geneticist

HUMAN embryos being “edited” to enhance their health and intelligence is not a “threat” and should be embraced, a leading geneticist has said.

George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, said the controversy surrounding the editing of embryos was overblown and compared it to the short-lived moral panic that preceded the introduction of IVF, or “test tube babies”, in the late Seventies.

Interviewed in today’s Telegraph Magazine, Prof Church, who made his name as part of an international team that first mapped the human genome in 2003, said he was less worried about gene editing being used to enhance human intelligence than the technique being restricted to a privileged few. He predicted it would eventually be “adopted worldwide”.

“I just don’t think that blue eyes and [an extra] 15 IQ points is really a public health threat,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a threat to our morality.” In November last year, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, shocked the world by announcing he had used CRISPR-CAS9, a genetic editing tool that Prof Church helped pioneer, to disable a gene called CCR5 in the embryos of twin girls to make them resistant to HIV.

The move was condemned as “monstrous” by scientists worldwide as it broke a long-standing scientific taboo – using an unproven technique to address a disease that is already treatable.

But while others expressed outrage, Prof Church remained equivocal, telling Science magazine: “As long as these are normal, healthy kids, it’s going to be fine for the field and the family.”

In today’s interview, Prof Church goes further, comparing the reaction to Mr He’s announcement with the fear that surrounded the first use of IVF. He said the answer to worries about the inequality gene editing could bring was not to restrict new gene editing technologies but make them available to all.

Interview: Telegraph Magazine