House spending panel drops U.S. ban on gene-edited babies

A Democrat-led spending panel in the U.S. House of Representatives has dropped a provision that banned embryo editing with the intention of creating a baby. It bars the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from considering any clinical trial application “in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification.” Although a different “rider” bars the National Institutes of Health from funding human germline editing—or the genetic modification of sperm, eggs, or embryos—such work is permissible with private funding.

Source: www.sciencemag.org