Embryos, Justice, and Personal Responsibility
Independent ethics committees are often charged with settling the impassioned moral debates fueled by the editing and manipulation of human embryos. And yet, despite being empowered to rule on the creation, modification, and termination of life, most review processes do not satisfy some fundamental criteria of justice.
AMSTERDAM/MONTREAL – A Chinese scientist’s claims to have created the world’s first genetically edited babies have injected a new sense of urgency into the discussions about ethics and social and personal responsibility surrounding the capacity to create and genetically modify human embryos. New technologies such as genome “base editing” have even raised the specter of widespread “embryo farming,” prompting calls for a reevaluation of how embryo research is regulated.