'Chemical surgery' used for first time to edit human embryos
Chinese scientists have trialled a 'base editing' procedure dubbed "chemical surgery" to mend harmful mutations in human embryos for the first time. The procedure changed a single letter in a faulty gene that gives rise to thalassemia, a blood disorder. Earlier, the same team failed to correct the gene in the first-ever human gene-editing instance using CRISPR-Cas9, triggering ethical debates.