Barbara Shinn-Cunningham

encoded in the brain. Somehow, I now find myself a neuroscientist. But I still suffer from gaps in my knowledge. That is why I like collaborating. of their cells carried the change. Moreover, the cells had their own mind on how to repair the change, with a quarter of them using endogenous templates, while cuts in off-target locations were also observed. The high likelihood of unwanted reactions led the authors to conclude that the system is not ready for clinical application yet. Ironically, they backed up this conclusion by citing both the statements of concern from Lanphier and colleagues and from the Napa meeting, which had been triggered by the rumours of their own endeavours. Criticism of the publication has claimed that the method used was not up-to-date and that the paper was rushed through publication, with an acceptance date only one day after receipt. However, the journal has defended the review process and stated that the paper arrived with peer reviews from previous submissions to other journals and that it was fasttracked due to its high relevance. While the Chinese paper shows that designer babies are not going to be born soon, it has also alerted the world to the realisation that, once the technical issues are resolved, it may be impossible to police a global ban on germline modifications. Even if most of us don’t want to live in a world of genetically optimised offspring as described in GATTACA, the impact of technological progress may already be driving us in that direction. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which has already played a key role in shaping the UK’s policy to permit mitochondrial replacement therapy with a report published in 2012, is now setting up a new project to explore the ethical issues attached to genome editing. The council’s assistant director, Peter Mills wrote in a blog post: “The escape of genome editing from the laboratory into the public sphere — especially following the development of the CRISPR–Cas9 system — suggests that contained use, at least in the sense of reserving questions about the use of genome editing for researchers qua researchers to address, is no longer possible.” Pandora’s box has been cast wide open, and we, as a civilisation, now face the challenge of deciding how we are going to deal with its content.