Controversial CRISPR Babies

11th December 2018

Excerpt from article accompanying interview:

“The world of genetics has been rocked this month, with the announcement from a scientist called He Jiankui at China’s Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, that he’d been using the experimental DNA editing system, called CRISPR, on human embryos. The modified embryos were implanted and a pair of twins carrying the genetic changes have allegedly been born. If this is true, it’s a monumental milestone but has totally run against what the community considers safe and ethical. Now, the scientist involved has since vanished, and his website has been taken down. So did it really happen, and what’s the fallout going to be? Georgia Mills caught up with Anna Middleton – head of Society and Ethics Research at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge…”

• MP3 of full interview

• Article and interview on The Naked Scientists' website

Mills G (2018) Interview with Anna Middleton. Controversial CRISPR Babies. [The Naked Scientist podcast]. [radio] 11 December. Available at: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/controversial-crispr-babies [Accessed: 12 December 2018]