Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Gene therapy is not yet possible, but may become feasible soon, particularly for well understood gene defects. Although treatment of a patient raises no ethical problems once it can be done well, changing the genes of an early embryo is more difficult, controversial and unlikely to be required clinically.