O CRISPR Atlas
Ethics
The arguments this technology forces — presented with the strongest case on each side, not a verdict.
8 ethics in the Atlas. Each topic shows the strongest argument on both sides before you open it. The Atlas does not take a position.
8 exibidos
Germline and heritable genome editing
Editing embryos, eggs or sperm would change every cell of a future person and be passed to their descendants — which is why it is…
For couples where both partners carry two copies of a recessive disease variant, no embryo can be free of it — preimplantation selection cannot help, and…
Critics argueConsent is impossible: the person most affected does not exist yet and their descendants never will be asked.
Enhancement and 'designer babies'
The question of editing for traits rather than disease — where the science is much weaker than the debate assumes.
Parents already shape children's traits through education, nutrition, medicine and environment; genetic means are not obviously different in kind.
Critics argueThe polygenic reality means promised enhancements are largely unachievable, so the debate risks legitimising claims that cannot be delivered.
Disability, difference and the meaning of 'cure'
Whether some conditions gene editing could eliminate are diseases to be cured or forms of human variation — a question the people…
Many conditions cause severe pain, organ damage and early death; treating them is not a statement about anyone's worth.
Critics argueResources directed at eliminating a condition are not directed at accommodating the people who have it.
Access, cost and global equity
A two-million-dollar cure for a disease concentrated in the world's poorest regions is the field's most concrete ethical problem.
High prices fund the development that produced the therapy, and no therapy is worse than an expensive one.
Critics arguePricing at what health systems will bear rather than what treatment costs makes universal access structurally impossible.
Gene drives and the environment
Engineered genetic elements designed to spread through a wild population — potentially eliminating malaria, and potentially…
Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people a year, most of them children under five; existing tools have plateaued and resistance is rising.
Critics argueAn organism engineered to spread cannot meaningfully be recalled once released.
Biosecurity and dual use
Techniques that make medicine cheaper and faster also make misuse cheaper and faster — the unavoidable dual-use problem.
Open publication accelerates defensive work — vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics — more than it aids attack.
Critics argueSome results genuinely lower the barrier to causing harm, and publishing them is a choice.
Consent for permanent change
What informed consent means for a treatment that cannot be stopped, reversed or withdrawn.
Patients with severe disease are capable of weighing serious risk and are entitled to do so.
Critics argue'Informed' is hard to achieve when the mechanism is unfamiliar and long-term effects are unknown even to investigators.
Human embryo research
Editing embryos in the laboratory, without transfer to a uterus, is permitted in some countries and prohibited in others — and it…
It is the only way to understand early human development and why so many pregnancies fail.
Critics argueSome hold that an embryo has moral status making research use impermissible regardless of benefit.