New Delhi: The World Health Organisation has urged medically advanced nations across the world to not proceed with the gene editing technology until there is a proper ethics committee made by the global health body.
The WHO expert advisory committee on governance and oversight of human genome editing at a recently convened meeting recommended to the WHO Director-general that “it would be irresponsible at this time for anyone to proceed with clinical applications of human germline genome editing.”
WHO supports this interim recommendation and advises regulatory or ethics authorities to refrain from issuing approvals concerning requests for clinical applications for work that involves human germline genome editing.
“Human germline genome editing poses unique and unprecedented ethical and technical challenges,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“I have accepted the interim recommendations of WHO’s Expert Advisory Committee that regulatory authorities in all countries should not allow any further work in this area until its implications have been properly considered.”
WHO’s Expert Advisory Committee continues its consideration of this matter, and will, at its forthcoming meeting in Geneva on 26-28 August 2019 evaluate, inter alia, effective governance instruments to deter and prevent irresponsible and unacceptable uses of genome edited embryos to initiate human pregnancies.
