Coming right up: GMO people

First Human Embryos Edited in U.S.

The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon, MIT Technology Review has learned.

The effort, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, involved changing the DNA of a large number of one-cell embryos with the gene-editing technique CRISPR, according to people familiar with the scientific results.

. . . .

The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon, MIT Technology Review has learned.

The effort, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, involved changing the DNA of a large number of one-cell embryos with the gene-editing technique CRISPR, according to people familiar with the scientific results.

. . . .

A person familiar with the research says “many tens” of human IVF embryos were created for the experiment using the donated sperm of men carrying inherited disease mutations. 

Embryos at this stage are tiny clumps of cells invisible to the naked eye. 

MIT Technology Review could not determine which disease genes had been chosen for editing.

If you think a fertilized ovum is a person with all the moral status had by any human from birth to death this sort of thing is, in your view, as much a moral horror as anything done by the Nazis in their death camps.

But if not . . .