Kazuto Kato: the ethics of editing humanity

^{Photo from Kazuto Kato’s biography at
University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law}

Gary Humphreys talks to Kazuto Kato about the ethical and societal challenges posed by biotechnologies that allow for the editing of the human genome.

Q: You started out working in developmental biology. How did you become interested in the field of ethics and governance of biomedicine?

A: As a student, I always had a broad interest in the societal issues related to biological science and its application and was actually a member of a student club that focused on such issues. I was also encouraged to look at issues outside the laboratory by my uncle, Professor Shuzo Nishimura, a pioneer in the field of health economics in Japan. Of course, I also had nine years at Kyoto University and four years at the University of Cambridge with Sir John Gurdon studying biology, with a focus on stem cell biology and genomics. This background has helped me navigate what is sometimes complex terrain.

Q: Given that complexity, can you start by giving our readers a simple definition of genomics...