Gene Editing in Sickle Cell Disease

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The debate about designer babies, we've leapt way ahead of ourselves. There aren't even many people suggesting that we should be moving into the clinic with editing embryos for cases of very severe disease at this point. The much closer applications of gene editing are for treating genetic diseases in children or adults where a mutation is causing problems and you could target those cells with gene editing to make them work in a healthy way.

Ian Sample speaks to Guardian science correspondent Hannah Devlin about the latest developments and debates about gene editing to emerge from a summit at the Francis Crick Institute in London. The summit heard from the first person with sickle cell disease to be treated with a technique known as Crispr. He also hears from Prof Claire Booth about ensuring these cutting edge treatments are made available to everyone who needs them. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod