Well, when we think about designer humans
or “CRISPR babies” as we've seen in the
media, this sparks some people's imagination
to think about what one might want to do with
a technology like this, maybe not today and
maybe not next year but in the future.
And it's one thing to talk about being able
to remove mutations from the human population
that cause genetic disease—and I think for
many people that would be a desirable thing
to do—On the other hand I think it's a very
different discussion to think about using
a technology like this to create enhanced
human beings, people that are taller or have
a certain eye color or other kinds of physical
or intellectual traits that might be considered
desirable.
And it sort of immediately brings up sort
of the whole area of eugenics and sort of
access to technology, who gets access, who
pays for it, who decies?
Who decides whether or not to do such a thing?
Should companies be allowed to offer this
as a service to parents who want to do this
so should they be regulated in some way?
There's a lot of very interesting and challenging
questions I think that go along with that.
And then there's the whole question of, since
this is a technology that is widely available—I
really call it a democratizing technology
because it's not very expensive to use and
labs worldwide have been able to easily deploy
it in different systems—So then how do we
think about a global regulation?
Is it even possible to come to some kind of
consensus globally?
I'm not sure, honestly, of the answer to that.
I think that it's certainly important to be
having this discussion with our colleagues
in other countries and fortunately that's
happening.
But are we going to be able to control what
people are doing in every jurisdiction?
I think no way, and so I think it's one of
those things that it's one of the aspects
of this technology that we have to grapple
with, is the fact that it's widely available
and that people will start using it in different
ways, potentially even in the future to create
genetically altered humans.
