Ethical issues related to research on genome editing in human embryos

Abstract

Although the potential advantages of clinical germline genome editing (GGE) over currently available methods are limited, the implementation of GGE in the clinic has been proposed and discussed. Ethical issues related to such an application have been extensively debated, meanwhile, seemingly less attention has been paid to ethical implications of studies which would have to be conducted in order to evaluate potential clinical uses of GGE.

In this article, we first provide an overview of the debate on potential clinical uses of GGE. Then, we discuss questions and ethical issues related to the studies relevant to evaluation of potential clinical uses of GGE. In particular, we describe the problems related to the acceptable safety threshold, current technical hurdles in human GGE, the destruction of human embryos used in the experiments, involvement of egg donors, and genomic sequencing performed on the samples of the research participants.

The technical and ethical problems related to studies on GGE should be acknowledged and carefully considered in the process of deciding to apply technology in such a way that will provide benefits and minimize harms.