World Economic Forum weighs in on CRISPR
/Editing the human genome: do the risks outweigh the rewards?
In November last year, the international scientific community was shocked by the announcement by He Jiankui, a CRISPR scientist, that he and his team at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen had created the first “gene-edited babies”. The genetic material of these babies had been edited to make them resistant to HIV, smallpox and cholera.
This event has raised a flurry of reactions and controversies, and also demonstrated some deep ambiguities surrounding the risks and implications of research on genome editing, which could fundamentally change how humans are “fabricated”. Beyond the purely scientific aspect, the question of how to balance potential benefits against the potential negative consequences must consider the acceptability of the risks involved.
