https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crispr-edited-babies-arrived-and-regulators-are-still-racing-to-catch-up/

Last November, a Chinese scientist provoked a global outcry when he announced that he had helped create the world’s first genome-edited babies. Scientists swiftly and severely condemned Southern University of Science and Technology’s He Jiankui for bypassing some safety and ethics checks. The revelation also prompted intense discussion about what should be done to block the next gene-editing rogue. Since then, various groups, including two major international organizations, have begun developing new regulatory frameworks to govern human genome editing. Meanwhile, debate has also swirled about whether there’s an immediate need to prohibit gene editing in clinical research.

When He used the popular CRISPR-Cas9 tool to try and disable the molecular pathway that HIV uses to infect cells in twin girls when they were embryos, there was no existing international moratorium against creating CRISPR babies, or penalties in China for doing so. Warnings had emerged from gene-editing conferences, but apparently they were not clear or emphatic enough. He, for instance, maintained that he’d followed the best practices set forth in 2017 by a panel of leading US scientists and ethicists, checking all the boxes related to safety and oversight. His work represented a significant leap in germline gene editing, which introduces heritable changes and therefore has the potential to stamp out rare, devastating genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. Yet serious concerns abound about off-target effects.