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Adopt a moratorium on heritable genome editing

Eric Lander, Françoise Baylis, Feng Zhang, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Paul Berg and specialists from seven countries call for an international governance framework.
  1. Eric S. Lander

    1. Eric S. Lander is president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

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  2. Françoise Baylis

    1. Françoise Baylis is a university research professor, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.

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  3. Feng Zhang

    1. Feng Zhang is a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

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  4. Emmanuelle Charpentier

    1. Emmanuelle Charpentier is founding and acting head of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, Germany.

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  5. Paul Berg

    1. Paul Berg is Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Emeritus Professor in the biochemistry department at Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

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  6. Catherine Bourgain

    1. Catherine Bourgain is head of the Center for Research in Medicine, Science, Health, Mental Health, and Society at the University of Paris Descartes, Paris, France.

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  7. Bärbel Friedrich

    1. Bärbel Friedrich is professor emeritus, Faculty of Biology, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.

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  8. J. Keith Joung

    1. J. Keith Joung is professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

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  9. Jinsong Li

    1. Jinsong Li is a professor at Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai, China.

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  10. David Liu

    1. David Liu is Richard Merkin Professor and director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

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  11. Luigi Naldini

    1. Luigi Naldini is director of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Italy.

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  12. Jing-Bao Nie

    1. Jing-Bao Nie is a professor at the Bioethics Centre/Te Pokapū Matatika Koiora, University of Otago/Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo.

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  13. Renzong Qiu

    1. Renzong Qiu is professor emeritus at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences & Center for Bioethics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

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  14. Bettina Schoene-Seifert

    1. Bettina Schoene-Seifert is chair for medical ethics, University of Münster, Germany.

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  15. Feng Shao

    1. Feng Shao is professor and deputy director, National Institute of Biological Sciences (NIBS), Beijing, China.

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  16. Sharon Terry

    1. Sharon Terry is president and chief executive of Genetic Alliance, Washington DC, USA.

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  17. Wensheng Wei

    1. Wensheng Wei is a professor at Peking University College of Life Sciences, Beijing, China.

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  18. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker

    1. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker is professor-emeritus at Gene Center Munich, Department of Biochemistry, University of Munich, Germany.

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We call for a global moratorium on all clinical uses of human germline editing — that is, changing heritable DNA (in sperm, eggs or embryos) to make genetically modified children.

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Nature 567, 165-168 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00726-5

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Competing Interests

Eric Lander (E.L.) notes that institutions with which he is associated — Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard — have interests in CRISPR technology, including patents and patent applications, and that he is a co-inventor on certain patents and patent applications relating to CRISPR-based gene-editing technologies. He also serves on the board of directors for Codiak BioSciences and Neon Therapeutics, and serves on the scientific advisory board of F-Prime Capital Partners and Third Rock Ventures. Feng Zhang (F.Z.) is a founder and scientific adviser for Editas Medicine, Beam Therapeutics, Arbor Biotechnologies, and Pairwise Plants. F.Z. is also an inventor on a number of issued patents and applications relating to CRISPR-based gene-editing technologies. Emmanuelle Charpentier (E.C.) is a co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics and ERS Genomics and is a member of the scientific advisory board of CRISPR Therapeutics. J. Keith Joung (J.K.J.) has financial interests in Beam Therapeutics, Editas Medicine, Endcadia, EpiLogic Therapeutics, Pairwise Plants, Poseida Therapeutics, and Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals. J.K.J.’s interests were reviewed and are managed by Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare in accordance with their conflict of interest policies. J.K.J. is a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. J.K.J. is a co-inventor on various patents and patent applications that describe gene-editing technologies. David R. Liu (D.R.L.) is a consultant and co-founder of Beam Therapeutics, Editas Medicine, and Pairwise Plants, companies that use genome editing, and is a co-inventor on genome editing patents. Complete financial disclosures are available at https://liugroup.us/david-r-liu/. Wensheng Wei (W.W.) serves as a scientific adviser for EdiGene.

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