Creating “designer babies” with a revolutionary new genome-editing technique would be extremely difficult, according to the first U.S. experiment that tried to replace a disease-causing gene in a viable human embryo.
Partial results of the study had leaked out last week, ahead of its publication in Nature on Wednesday, stirring critics’ fears that genes for desired traits — from HIV resistance to strong muscles — might soon be easily slipped into embryos. In fact, the researchers found the opposite: They were unable to insert a lab-made gene.
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