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Shortly after 8:00 this morning, more than two dozen people filled the small conference room at the National Academies’ Keck Center as the Committee on Human Gene Editing convened for the fourth time since it was assembled last year. The committee’s task: to research, discuss, and report on “the scientific underpinnings of human gene-editing technologies, their potential use in biomedical research and medicine—including human germline editing—and the clinical, ethical, legal, and social implications of their use.” Today, we were to hear talks on the history of different racial groups’ regard for science, medicine, and genetics, and historical and ethical perspectives on the editing of the human germline to treat genetic disorders, in particular those that strike people of certain ethnic backgrounds more frequently than others.
The committee, composed of 22 members from eight countries, first began its investigation last year at the Human Gene Editing Summit, which attracted top-notch scientists from around the world, including the heavy hitters in the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology for precision gene editing. The group met twice earlier in the year, and a...