Stop Designer Babies protests irresponsible summit plans to legalise human genetic modification

The anti-eugenics activist group, Stop Designer Babies (SDB),(1) is protesting today outside the ‘International Summit’ on human genetic modification (HGM).(2) SDB and its international partners are pledged to defend international Human Rights treaties and legislation in 70 countries banning HGM, (3) which were created because of the ongoing experience of eugenics. Today, SDB released research that demonstrates the links between the venue, the summit chair and the Eugenics Society, links which are doubly disturbing given that HGM was always a holy grail of eugenicists.

The research, published today on SDB’s website, details the eugenic views of Francis Crick, after whom the Summit venue is named, which should have prevented the Medical Research Council from naming the Institute after him. What is equally disturbing is that the summit chair, Robin Lovell-Badge, who made himself central to scientists’ efforts to legalise HGM,(4) gave the Eugenics Society Galton Lecture(5) in 2017. An article in last week’s Nature magazine hoped genome editing could move on after the scandal of He Jiankui’s announcement of the creation of three GM babies in 2019. But there is an...