by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy

Scientists have taken a giant leap toward being able to prevent babies from inheriting genetic diseases, but the technology won?t be available for real-life use any time soon.
Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University in collaboration with scientists in California, China and South Korea figured out a way to fix a common gene mutation by editing the genes of embryos. The mutation causes a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which results in heart problems that can lead to sudden death later in life.
According to the research published this month in the journal Nature, the scientists took sperm from a man who has the mutation and used it to fertilize eggs from 12 healthy women. Using a gene editing technique, they cut out the mutated DNA sequence and replaced it with a synthetic, healthy one. About 72 percent of the embryos emerged from the experiment mutation-free. Babies born from those embryos would have developed without the disease, and would not have passed mutated genes onto their descendants, the scientists said.
 
The experiment ended there, however, because the embryos were destroyed after 3 days. Federal law prohibits scientists from allowing edited embryos to develop into babies.
As you might imagine, this kind of research is highly controversial and fraught with ethical concerns. Some critics worry it could lead to people trying to create ?designer babies? with favorable traits such as good loo...