WHO Issues Human Genome Editing Oversight Findings
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a pair of long-awaited reports tackling the controversial issue of heritable and somatic human genome editing (HGE).
The two new WHO reports cover global standards for governance and oversight of genome editing. They make a number of recommendations around further education, monitoring of clinical trials, whistle-blowing procedures, and intellectual property.
The reports were written by a multidisciplinary international commission of 18 experts, co-chaired by Margaret Hamburg, MD, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Edwin Cameron, a retired South African Supreme Court Justice. The commission, made up of scientists, bioethicists, regulatory and legal experts, held multiple meetings over the past two years before issuing the reports.
The reports are published ten months after another blue-ribbon commission, under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences and the U.K. Royal Society, issued its own report in September 2020. That report focused on the translational and safety aspects of HHGE: It left the door open for the potential use of heritable human genome editing in a narrow set of circumstances—primarily when both members of a couple with a recessive disease seek to have a biologically healthy child, rendering other technologies such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis ineffective.
