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Did a permissive scientific culture encourage the ‘CRISPR babies’ experiment?

Nature Biotechnology volume 37, pages 355–357 (2019)Cite this article

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The Nuffield Council on Bioethics in the UK also issued a report in July 20183. Notably, it concludes that germline genome editing could be permissible under certain circumstances. More strongly, it moves beyond the merely permissible to the ethically obligatory, saying in its final section (paragraph 5.2) that “there are moral reasons to continue with the present lines of research and to secure the conditions under which heritable genome editing would be permissible.”

Here, we review the Nuffield Council report and show how its shortcomings are part of an increasingly permissive climate among elite scientists that may well have emboldened He. Without a robust and meaningful airing of the perils of human germline modification, these views are likely to encourage additional, more mainstream moves in the same dangerous direction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of London, London, UK

    Donna Dickenson

  2. Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Donna Dickenson

  3. Center for Genetics and Society, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Marcy Darnovsky

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Correspondence to Donna Dickenson.

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Dickenson, D., Darnovsky, M. Did a permissive scientific culture encourage the ‘CRISPR babies’ experiment?. Nat Biotechnol 37, 355–357 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0077-3

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