Resumen de Scientific, ethical and legal issues of germline gene editing: Light and shadow in the declaration of the Spanish Bioethics Commitee
The applicability of the CRISPR-Cas9 tool to the cure of several flaws in human embryos has raised up the number of worldwide basic and preclinical trials. By the end of 2018, the birth of the first ge-netically edited twins in China was known, intending to prevent them from catching HIV, since one of their parents had already suffered it. This led to social alarm, as the gestation process was carried out in disre-gard of medical standards and the assessments of ethics committees. The purpose of the present paper is to establish whether the intervention could be considered therapy, prevention – when trying to prevent an expected future pathology – or whether, in contrast, it would be, as has been widely defended, a clear case of enhancement, drawing the boundaries between all of them. To this end, the Declaration of the Spanish Bioeth-ics Committee will be examined, highlighting some of their scientific, ethical and legal claims, and providing some comments that could call into question its original position.
