No One Should Edit The Genes Of Embryos To Make Babies, NIH Chief Says
By Nidhi Subbaraman,
BuzzFeed
| 07. 14. 2016
[originally published as "At Gene Editing Meeting, Scientists Discuss God, Racism, Designer Babies"]
Gene editing must never be used to create “designer babies” with enhanced abilities, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told a gathering of top scientists on Tuesday.
More provocatively, he also said that science is not ready for the controversial new technology to be used to eliminate genetic diseases that are passed down from one generation to the next.
“We must be aware of the hubris that it would take for human beings to be so smart that we thought we had the ability and the ethical principles to do such a thing,” the NIH chief, Francis Collins, said. “Humility would be a very good principle to attach to any such discussion.”
Collins was addressing a prestigious committee of about two dozen legal and scientific experts gathered to discuss the ethics of gene editing — a new technology that grabbed the spotlight last year.
CRISPR/Cas9, the most famous of this suite of powerful new tools, enables scientists to locate and replace human genes with unprecedented ease and precision.
But the prospect of using the tool on egg...
Related Articles
By Alondra Nelson, Science | 09.11.2025
In the United States, the summer of 2025 will be remembered as artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) cruel summer—a season when the unheeded risks and dangers of AI became undeniably clear. Recent months have made visible the stakes of the unchecked use...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
By Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian | 09.23.2025
In March 2021, a 25-year-old US citizen was traveling through Chicago’s Midway airport when they were stopped by US border patrol agents. Though charged with no crime, the 25-year-old was subjected to a cheek swab to collect their DNA, which...
By Julie Métraux, Mother Jones | 09.23.2025
