On Thursday during a meeting in Washington, an international group of scientists has called for an immediate halt on the researches that aim to make some inheritable changes in the human genome.

The biologists said till the time the risks associated with the technique called Crispr-Cas9 are not specified it will be irresponsible on their part to promote it. They cannot approve it until they completely assess it and have a broad societal consensus about the appropriateness of any proposed change.

The group said such a work might proceed in future where the experts will have advanced knowledge on making permanent changes to the human genome that will be revised on the daily basis.

The meeting was organized by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the Institute of Medicine, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London.

During the meeting the panel also considered similar restraints that were proposed in 1975 on an earlier form of gene manipulation by an international scientific meeting in California.

David Baltimore, an American biologist, during the conference this week said, “The overriding question is when, if ever, we will want to use gene editing to change human inheritance”.

He said participation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is a notable achievement for the organizers of the meeting as earlier this year Chinese scientists were found independently moving towards clinical alterations to the human germline.

Editorial changes made to human genome would be inherited by the patient’s children and thus contribute permanent changes to the human gene pool, said experts.