Ethical Boundaries

In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui used CRISPR on human embryos and announced the first gene-edited babies. Scientists worldwide called it reckless: the changes were untested, unnecessary, and irreversible for those children. He was tried for illegal medical practice and sent to prison for three years.

Here lies the real divide. Edit a patient's body cells and the change affects only that one person. Edit an embryo and the change is copied into every cell — and passed to all their descendants. That second kind, called germline editing, could erase an inherited disease for good, or lock a hidden mistake into the family line with no undo.