The US National Academy of Sciences had to take down a video and tweet it posted earlier this week on gene editing, CBS News reports.
It adds that the tweet from NAS, which it captured with a screen shot, read, with emojis: "Dream of being stronger? Or smarter? Do you dream of having a top student or star athlete? Or a child free of inheritable #diseases? Can human #GeneEditing eventually make this and more possible? #TheScienceBehindIt Take the quiz!"
The tone of the tweet and the video it linked to struck some in the field as overly casual and suggested that gene editing in that way was both possible and free of ethical concerns, CBS News adds. It indicated "a cavalier attitude toward this serious topic," the University of California, Davis's Paul Knoepfler tells it.
NAS deleted the tweet and noted in a replacement tweet that a report it issued in 2017 "recommends that we should not proceed with human genome editing for purposes other than treatment or prevention of disease and disability."