The move comes after a Chinese scientist went rogue in 2018, saying he’d used an editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the genes of newborn two twin girls when they were just embryos. 

He Jiankui was jailed in December last year, a court saying he’d “crossed the bottom line of ethics in scientific research and medical ethics”. 

University of Auckland molecular biologist Hilary Sheppard told The AM Show on Friday what He Jiankui did was unethical.

“I think that opened everyone’s eyes to the potential ethical issues we’re going to face with this amazing technology. It’s not ethical and we’re not quite ready to use it in embryos…

“You might accidentally hit another gene you weren’t intending, or you could create a variant of DNA that hasn’t been seen before in nature, and we don’t know what the consequences of that may be.” 

Dr Sheppard said CRISPR is useful for research, but isn’t quite safe enough for editing unborn babies yet – ethical concerns aside.

“A lot of traits people might be interested in editing are too complex to even consider. But if we’re talking about disease-causing genes, there are certainly diseases that we could edit perhaps, but there are alternatives that are much safer.”