Heritable human genome editing: making ‘societal dialogue’ meaningful
By Jackie Leach Scully,
Nuffield Council on Bioethics
| 10. 02. 2020
The Consensus Study Report of the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, produced by an international commission convened by the US National Academies of Medicine and Sciences and the UK’s Royal Society, is careful to state that its focus is firmly on the scientific and technical sides of heritable human genome editing (HHGE) rather than the social and ethical. Although other commentators have properly pointed out the artificiality of that divide and the implausibility of a science untouched by social and ethical values, it is nevertheless a step in the right direction of acknowledging that HHGE’s ethical and social implications are of a scale that requires something more than a couple of chapters tucked in at the end of a report.
The Consensus Study Report still has much in common with earlier reports that gave more houseroom to ethical issues, including the National Academies’ earlier (and broader) Human genome editing: science, ethics, and governance (2017) and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ own two reports, Genome editing: an ethical review (2016) and Genome editing and...
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Following a long-standing CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year.
In 2025, we published up to four posts every month, written by 12 authors (staff, consultants and allies), some in collaboration and one simply credited to CGS.
These titles are presented in chronological order, except for three In Memoriam notices, which follow. Many more posts that are worth your time can be found in the archive. Scroll down and “VIEW...
