Should We Use Gene Editing to Create Super Babies?
By Katie Hasson,
The New York Times Upfront
| 02. 17. 2025
A young couple wants to have a baby, but they’re worried it’ll carry a disease that runs in the family. “There’s a solution,” the doctor says, “a technology that can alter the disease-causing gene in the egg, ensuring that the baby is born healthy.”
“How about giving our child blue eyes and musical talent?” the parents ask. “I think I can help you,” the doctor says.
Such a conversation once belonged only in the realm of science fiction. But with advances in gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR, fiction might become reality. In 2018, a doctor in China announced that he’d used CRISPR to edit twin girls’ DNA to protect them against the AIDS virus.
But not everyone thinks the world is ready for all the implications of tinkering with human genes. For instance, who’d get to decide which traits should be changed? And aren’t the traits we’re born with part of who we are? In a recent Pew Research Center study, about half of Americans agreed that it was “meddling with nature” and “a line we should...
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