A federal safety board just OK’d the first CRISPR trial to genetically alter humans

In the spring of 2015, a group of Chinese scientists modified the DNA of 54 embryos using CRISPR/Cas 9 technology. Twenty-eight of those embryos were successful, but 26 — nearly half of them — failed, setting off a heated debate throughout the scientific community on the ethics of altering human genes. Regulators don’t currently allow the use of CRISPR on human DNA in the United States, but researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have proposed the first human study using the technology. The proposal would allow these researchers to make T cells with the ability to attack three inherited types of cancer.

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