Bioethics centre says Britain moving toward genetically modified babies

Feb 4, 2016 by

Catholic Herald:

A Catholic bioethics institute has accused the British government of moving toward the creation of genetically modified babies after scientists were given permission to alter the DNA of embryos in experimentation.

The Anscombe Bioethics Centre, an Oxford-based institute serving the Catholic Church in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, denounced the development as “yet more destructive experimentation on human embryos.”

“Experiments to edit the genes of human embryos represent a further step towards the creation of GM babies,” David Jones, director of Anscombe, said yesterday.

“This move is only the latest step after attempts to clone human embryos, to create human-animal hybrid embryos and to create three parent embryos,” he said in a statement sent to Catholic News Service.

“Each step has been accompanied by exaggerated promises to cure or prevent diseases, but the real result is simply more unethical experimentation on human beings at the earliest stage of their development,” Jones added.

He said gene editing would be legitimate “only where it is safe and beneficial for the individual patient and not where it aims to affect future generations.”

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