A bioethics panel of the Japanese government on Friday approved gene modifications of fertilized human eggs for basic research purposes, while rejecting the technology's clinical use due partly to the unknown impact on the next generation. Studies on so-called genome editing are under way to use it for animals, plants and human body cells, but whether the technology should be applicable to fertilized human eggs is being debated worldwide after Chinese scientists reported gene editing of human embryos last year, in what was believed to be the world's first such case. http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160423/p2g/00m/0dm/002000c
