“I think the time is right for the defining company in the US to be built in this area,” Armstrong posted. Earlier methods, on the other hand, actually cut the double helix, damaging it and causing whole genes to disappear. While it's legal to study embryos in the lab, actually producing a gene-edited baby is flatly illegal in most countries. In the US, the modified baby ban operates via a law that forbids the Food and Drug Administration from considering, or even acknowledging, any application it gets to attempt a gene-edited baby. Up until this point, no US company has openly pursued embryo editing, and the federal government doesn’t fund studies on embryos at all.