With the emergence of CRISPR technology, targeted editing of a wide variety of genomes is no longer an abstract hypothetical, but occurs regularly. As application areas of CRISPR are exceeding beyond research and biomedical therapies, new and existing ethical concerns abound throughout the global community about the appropriate scope of the systems' use. Here we review fundamental ethical issues including the following: 1) the extent to which CRISPR use should be permitted; 2) access to CRISPR applications; 3) whether a regulatory framework(s) for clinical research involving human subjects might accommodate all types of human genome editing, including editing of the germline; and 4) whether international regulations governing inappropriate CRISPR use should be crafted and publicized. We conclude that moral decision making should evolve as CRISPR science advances and hold that it would be reasonable for national and supranational legislatures to consider evidence-based regulation.
See Full PDF See Full PDFCurrent Issues in Molecular Biology
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CRISPR/Cas, being an efficient, simple and cheap technology to edit the genome of any organism, raises 2 many ethical and regulatory issues beyond the use to manipulate human germline cells
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The extraordinary wave of genomic-engineering innovation, driven by CRISPR-Cas9, has sparked worldwide scientific and ethical uncertainty. Great concern has arisen across the globe about whether heritable genome editing should be permissible in humans—that is, whether it is morally acceptable to modify genomic material such that the ''edit'' is transferable to future generations. Here I examine 61 ethics statements released by the international community within the past 3 years about this controversial issue and consider the statements' overarching positions and limitations. Despite their inability to fully address all important considerations, many of the statements may advance debate and national and international law and public policy.
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Asian Bioethics Review
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Frontiers in Microbiology
Since determining the structure of the DNA double helix, the study of genes and genomes has revolutionized contemporary science; with the decoding of the human genome, new findings have been achieved, including the ability that humans have developed to modify genetic sequences in vitro. The discovery of gene modification mechanisms, such as the CRISPR-Cas system (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) and Cas (CRISPR associated). Derived from the latest discoveries in genetics, the idea that science has no limits has exploded. However, improvements in genetic engineering allowed access to new possibilities to save lives or generate new treatment options for diseases that are not treatable by using genes and their modification in the genome. With this greater knowledge, the immediate question is who governs the limits of genetic science? The first answer would be the intervention of a legislative branch, with adequate scientific advice, from which the logical answ.
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Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
CRISPR gene-editing technology has been hailed as 'revolutionary' and 'groundbreaking' (Zhang and Zhou 2014; Mariscal and Petropanagos 2016). It is viewed as a 'game-changer' in biology and is being adopted and deployed at a 'breakneck pace' (Ledford 2015a, 20–21). CRISPR is significantly cheaper, more versatile, and more effective than previous genetic engineering technologies and this has reignited the optimism among scientists in the possibility of a genuine genetic revolution. However, it has also been noted that the pace of adoption and use of CRISPR has left little time for ethical reflection (Doudna 2015; Baltimore et al. 2015). This paper aims to begin filling that gap by evaluating the ethics of using CRISPR on non-human animals in comparison to previous techniques. My aim is to assess whether CRISPR is as much an ethical game-changer as it is a scientific one. Although there are a variety of ethical issues related to genetic engineering, I will focus my attention on two: first, the popular intrinsic objection to genetic engineering that it is wrong because it involves crossing species boundaries; and second, general concerns relating to animal welfare. Based on consideration of these issues, I suggest that CRISPR can be construed as an ethical game-changer insofar as it substantially alters the landscape of ethical debate. It reduces the force of some ethical concerns while heightening the force of others and encourages us to rethink the overall debate and the regulatory frameworks we develop to monitor and guide genetic engineering.
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Canadian Journal of Bioethics
