Human Gene Editing: Where Does the 2017 National Academy of Sciences Report Bring Us? by Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD

The release of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (Academies) report on human gene editing signifies an effort to establish responsible policies and practices in a fast-moving new field of science (1). In contrast to the field of computing, where Moore's law describes a doubling of capacity roughly every 2 years, genetic technology has no metric of progress analogous to increasingly dense integrated circuits. But genetics can boast its own impressive story about techniques of increasing laboratory power, one that might be said to have started in 1972, when David Jackson, Robert Symons, and Paul Berg described gene manipulation by recombination of DNA (2). By 1974, the field had advanced so rapidly that researchers called for a moratorium (3). At the famous Asilomar conference in 1975, it was generally agreed that, owing to the scientific potential of recombinant DNA, the moratorium should be lifted but strict conditions should be put in place to avoid risks to public health and the ecosystem (4). By 1995, Berg and Maxine Singer could observe that “[l]iterally millions of experiments, many even inconceivable in 1975, have been carried out in the last 20 years without incident” (5). The scientific community's exercise in self-governance had paid off, with no “Andromeda Strain” doomsday scenario in sight.