As the international scientific community adjusts its wig after the shockwave of the world’s first genetically altered babies, one thing is clear: self-regulation of research is always a pipe dream. He Jiankui is neither a “rogue scientist” nor “crazy.” He is not a Dr. Moreau. He carries all the credentials of his profession’s elite. History abundantly shows that once a technology as potent as CRISPR exists, nothing can stop it from being used. Someone, somewhere, will feel an irresistible social need, whether from the exigencies of war that compelled the world’s top physicists to use their new knowledge of nuclear fission to make atomic bombs or from the dire straits of AIDS victims in China that compelled genome editors there to make children resistant to infection. The brave new world stumbles on.
