Amid the condemnation, though, it was easy to lose track of what the key experts were saying. Technology to alter heredity is for real. It is improving very quickly, it has features that will make it safe, and much wider exploratory use to create children could be justified soon.
[...] At Harvard, Neuhausser says he and a research fellow, Denis Vaughan, will in the next few weeks begin editing sperm to change a gene called ApoE, which is strongly linked to Alzheimer’s risk. A person who inherits two copies of the high-risk version of the gene has about a 60% lifetime risk of getting Alzheimer’s.
Neuhausser, an Austrian fertility doctor who came to the US to do his research and practice at Boston IVF, predicts that in not so many years, embryos will be deeply analyzed, selected, and in some cases altered with CRISPR before they are used to create a pregnancy. “In the future, people will go to clinics and get their genomes tested, and have the healthiest baby they can have,” he says. “I think the whole field will switch from fertility to disease prophylaxis”—preventing illness.
