The Council of Europe should not reaffirm the ban on germline genome editing in humans

In reaction to recent progress in human embryo genome editing, the Council of Europe is resolutely on its way to reaffirming a 20‐year‐old policy banning all inheritable interventions involving the human genome. This approach, which was well justified two decades ago, is now outdated, overly restrictive and will hamper promising research for germline gene therapy. A ban no longer makes sense from an ethical point of view.

Until recently, there has been a worldwide consensus among scientists and policymakers not to modify the human germline. The main rationale was that classical genetic engineering technologies in humans were inefficient and imprecise. The risks were simply too great. But the risk assessment was based on recombinant DNA technology, which is much less precise than the new genome editing technologies—with the flagship CRISPR/Cas9 system—that are much more efficient and precise. Although they are not yet sufficiently safe to be used in clinical trials, research has made rapid progress in improving efficiency and precision of the CRISPR technology [1]. With further improvements, gene‐editing technology therefore has …