CRISPR: Science Can't Solve it

This year, several leading researchers have sounded warnings about the risks of using the CRISPR gene-editing technique to modify human¹ and other species' genomes in ways that could have “unpredictable effects on future generations”² and “profound implications for our relationship to nature” (see go.nature.com/jq5sik).

Concerns are coming from the silicon sector as well. Last year, the physicist Stephen Hawking proclaimed that rapidly advancing artificial intelligence (AI) could destroy the human race. And in 2013, former Royal Society president Martin Rees co-founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, UK, in part to study threats from advanced AI.

Leaders of the scientific community are ready to share the responsibility for these powerful technologies with the public. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and others wrote last year of CRISPR that “the decision of when and where to apply this technology, and for what purposes, will be in our collective hands”.

But scientists also want to control the terms of engagement. The US National Academies, for example...