Claims of the first gene-edited babies spark an ethics firestorm
A Chinese scientist's announcement that he had created gene-edited infants drew global condemnation and alarm.
A Chinese scientist ignited a global ethics firestorm this year by announcing that he had created the world's first gene-edited babies, a claim that drew swift and near-universal condemnation from the scientific community and raised profound alarm about the premature and reckless use of powerful gene-editing technology on human beings.
The scientist said he had used a gene-editing tool to alter the DNA of embryos, which were then brought to term, with the stated aim of making the children resistant to a virus. The announcement, made outside the normal channels of peer-reviewed science, stunned researchers around the world.
The reaction was overwhelmingly critical. Scientists and ethicists condemned the experiment as dangerous, medically unjustified and a violation of widely held norms against editing the human germline, changes that would be passed down to future generations with consequences that could not be foreseen.
Gene-editing technology had revolutionised biology by making it possible to alter DNA with unprecedented precision, holding enormous promise for treating disease. But editing human embryos destined to become people raised grave scientific and ethical questions, and there was a broad consensus that the technology was not safe or well enough understood for such use.
The episode exposed the gap between the breathtaking pace of biotechnological advance and the development of the ethical frameworks and safeguards needed to govern it. It prompted urgent calls for stronger international oversight and a moratorium on the clinical use of germline editing.
Chinese authorities later took action against the scientist, and the affair became a cautionary tale about the risks of unregulated experimentation at the frontier of human biology. It underscored the extraordinary power, and peril, of the new tools of genetic engineering, and the pressing need for society to grapple with the question of how, and whether, they should be used to reshape human life itself.