Rewriting the Blueprint: The Ethics of Germline Gene Editing

In 2019, when Chinese researcher He Jiankui was jailed after creating the world’s first genetically engineered babies, the decades-old controversy surrounding human genome editing exploded within the scientific community (Groch). Jiankui was widely condemned for breaking the law and making germline gene modifications, a type of edit that permanently modifies the DNA of every cell in an embryo, and that will be passed on to future generations (Groch). Although arguments both for and against germline editing can be made within the framework of utilitarianism, this moral theory ultimately…