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Chinese Scientists Claim To Have Genetically Modified Human Embryos

Posted by samzenpus on from the super-babies dept.

Annanag writes: There were rumours — but now it's been confirmed. Chinese scientists have attempted the ethically questionable feat of genetically modifying human embryos. The scientists try to head off ethical concerns by using 'non-viable' embryos, which cannot result in a live birth, obtained from local fertility clinics. The study is a landmark — but also a cautionary tale.

2 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Cautionary Tale? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is this a cautionary tale? What horrific outcome did they have that we are supposed to learn from?

  2. Re:RTFA by tlambert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    2. Not only did the splicing technique not work very often (28 / 86 embryos), but it also created lots of off-target mutations in other parts of the DNA. Both of these results were not expected.

    Wrong. They only tested 54 of the embryo's afterward. 28/54 is a 51.8% success rate.

    The off-target mutations in the remaining 26 embryos was not only expected, it was predicted about 16 years ago, when we first started experimenting with retroviral splicing vectors.