Good news from the United Kingdom, with the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) being the world’s first regulatory authority to explicitly approve genetic engineering of human embryos. There are other countries who haven’t banned the technology, but this is the first one to purposefully allow it.
Of course, these won’t be designer babies, as the experiment must cease after the embryos are about 256 cells (about two weeks old). But this is necessary to study the effects of the technology so that maybe one day it will actually be safe enough to use for therapeutic or reproductive purposes. See more about the story in Nature News, Wired and The Guardian.
You can also read some opposition to the decision, with Craig Venter writing in Time and Donna Dickenson in The Telegraph. Both pretty much argue that we don’t yet know enough and should be cautious, and with this I agree. But unless we take the few cautious steps forward by doing the research, we’ll never know enough to be able to edit human genomes. Somehow I think that’s precisely the outcome the opponents want.
Human Enhancement and Biopolitics 