The US House of Representatives is wading into the debate over whether human embryos should be modified to introduce heritable changes. Its fiscal year 2016 spending bill for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would prohibit the agency from spending money to evaluate research or clinical applications for such products.
In an unusual twist, the bill—introduced on June 17—would also direct the FDA to create a committee that includes religious experts to review a forthcoming report from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). The IOM's analysis, which considers the ethics of creating embryos that have three genetic parents, was commissioned by the FDA.
The House legislation comes during a time of intense debate on such matters, sparked by the announcement in April that researchers in China had edited the genomes of human embryos. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) moved quickly to remind the public that a 1996 law prevents the federal government from funding work that destroys human embryos or creates them for research purposes.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing/
[Source]: http://www.nature.com/news/us-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing-1.17858
We covered a related story, Three-Person Babies Could Be Possible in Two Years just over a year ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:25PM
There's a homeless shelter in my area that gets government funding that forces people to go to a Christian Church as a mandatory condition of staying there. If that doesn't say "violation of rights" I don't know what does. This budding Christian theocracy overthrowing our constitutional form of government needs to be squashed as quickly as possible.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:11PM
The “budding Christian theocracy” is only a symptom of the disease.
A lot of times I wonder if the Masters of the Universe even follow a religion and if it has even a shred of Judeo-Christian mythology in it.
(Score: 2) by ah.clem on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:41PM
This is an interesting statement - are you willing to provide the name of the org and the city it's located in, Anon? If the statement turns out to be accurate, I will certainly do followup research on this.