Scientists have many tools at their disposal to study, manipulate and copy genes.
We don’t ordinarily include animal ethics items in the newsroom/Resource Library (this is the third such item out of 1300+ entries), primarily because we feel ill-equipped to comments on such matters, and we are not ordinarily proponents of slippery slope arguments, but David Hunter’s comments here are well made and worthy of consideration.
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Qiang Sun, a senior researcher in the project and Director of ION’s Nonhuman Primate Research Facility explains:
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We believe that this approach of cloning gene-edited monkeys could be used to generate a variety of monkey models for gene-based diseases, including many brain diseases, as well as immune and metabolic disorders and cancer.
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