Human Genome Editing: Our Future Belongs to All of Us

In late November 2018, the Chinese scientist He Jiankui ignited a media firestorm with the birth announcement of healthy twin girls, Lulu and Nana (pseudonyms), born following germline genome editing to provide resistance to HIV. This announcement was followed by swift and nearly unanimous condemnation. A common theme among the critics was He's failure to respect international consensus. A quick review of media reports and various commentaries chastising He for having violated international consensus suggests considerable equivocation about the scope and meaning of consensus. Some commentators referred to a perceived political consensus, others intuited a somewhat amorphous scientific consensus, and a few others complained of a failure to respect the call for broad societal consensus issued in December 2015 at the International Summit on Human Gene Editing. As a staunch proponent of broad societal consensus, I have tried to explain that this is not about unanimity, but that it also doesn't collapse into majority rule.