Experimenting on future children: How do early adopters shape the ethics and regulation of new technologies?

While CRISPR-Cas9 has dominated the science headlines in recent years, there has been a broad social and moral consensus that it is too soon to move to clinical use of genome editing in human reproduction. Nevertheless, Chinese scientist He Jiankui reported the use of CRISPR in the births of two girls last year. In this paper, I explore the question of what social and ethical effects such early adoption of innovative technologies in the context of human reproduction may have, focusing on scientists, women, and future children.  

I argue that responsible innovation in human reproductive technologies requires thinking beyond standard concerns with individual consent, autonomy and risk to broader ideas about shared life-worlds and intersubjectivity.