Position of the California Stem Cell Agency on Gene-Edited Babies? No Go.

California's $3 billion stem cell agency may be on the leading edge of regenerative medical research, but it is clearly opposed to the type of work that has led to the international flap over the gene-edited babies in China. 

Its regulations have long barred that sort of experimentation. In 2016, the agency, known formally as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), convened an international conference to discuss the issues involved.

The session in Los Angeles went on for hours, generating a 223-page transcript touching on the difficulty of regulating gene editing, among a host of other difficult issues. 

One patient advocate in the audience, Adrienne Bell Cors Shapiro, noted that it is nearly impossible to control all that might happen. She said,  

"People are messy. And if you develop this technology, somebody is going to find a way to use it."

Last week the MIT Technology Review published an article about a Stanford University investigation into what two of its researchers knew about the Chinese research. The scientists also have received CIRM funds for research unrelated to the Chinese work. 

Asked for a comment, a spokeswoman for the state stem cell agency said in an email:

"CIRM’s regulations prohibit nuclear genome editing for reproductive purposes. In February 2016, CIRM convened the Scientific and Medical Accountability Standards Working Group (SWG) for a workshop on Human Gene Editing. The SWG subsequently recommended that no changes be made to CIRM’s existing prohibition on nuclear genome editing for reproductive purposes."

In 2016, Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford who deals with bioethical issues, told the gene editing conference:

"CIRM is in the human embryo experimentation world. It funds research as long as the embryos are not implanted. It funds it with special protections and special review considerations and special informed consent considerations. I don't think CRISPR-cas9 changes that."

The controversial research in China triggered a global uproar in the scientific community. The leading stem cell research organization, the International Society for Stem Cell Research, issued a statement opposing such experimentation. 

He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who performed the experiment, has lost his job in that country, according to news reports, and may be facing criminal charges. His work has not been confirmed by an independent review.