Genetically modified babies? Turkish-based medical tourism company says they can help you make one

Heal2Go describes itself as “an innovative medical travel platform” with a mission “to make medical traveling easier… We’re working on becoming the world’s largest and most efficient curated marketplace for treatments abroad.”

[Eben] Kirksey, author of The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans, searched the site and found that Heal2Go had connections to seven clinics that it listed as promoting IVF treatments with CRISPR, explicitly offering “Gene Editing (GMO Babies)” and “Designer Babies.”

Kirksey notes that the claimed offerings may have just been “overzealous marketing,” and a Turkish colleague reassures him that the clinics involved knew nothing about it.

Medical Park Hospitals, a Turkish healthcare chain that is included in the screenshots, also reacted by saying that reproductive genetic modification is illegal in Turkey.

But there’s a jurisdictional gray area here. Cyprus is divided and the government that is recognized by every nation except Turkey only controls about 59% of the island, while the soi-disant Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus controls about 36%. (There is also a U.N. buffer zone.) And there is some suggestion that different rules may apply in Cyprus.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.