Free Republic

As I said in a BreakPoint commentary last month, gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR and what’s being called “Prime Editing” are “existential threats.” We have no idea what our attempts to play god with the human genome will unleash on humanity. Yet, we insist on charging ahead despite our imperfect knowledge with an unbounded confidence in our abilities.Coming from a concerned non-scientist like me, these concerns can be easily dismissed as alarmist, but what if the concern comes from the Director of the National Institutes of Health?It turns out that Francis Collins is also concerned. In a recent article in...

Researcher He Jiankui said last week that he had altered embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments. He said two of the edited embryos were born healthy twin baby girls. Their DNA had been altered to try to make them resistant to infection with the HIV virus. There is no independent confirmation of what He says he did. Over the weekend, reports emerged in Chinese media that He was being kept under house arrest. He was last seen Wednesday during an appearance at a conference in Hong Kong. He's [His] employer, the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen,...