Pushkin

From Pushkin Industries, this is Deep Background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.

I'm Noah Feldman.

Welcome to this week's program, where we're going to talk about gene editing, designer babies, and the future of science.

These are all topics of importance all the time, but they've become more pressing since the announcement that a Chinese scientist had actually used CRISPR Kast9, the leading cutting-edge editing technology,

to edit the genomes of two embryos to assure that they would not be able to be susceptible to the HIV

virus. This was good for the embryos, but it wasn't necessary scientifically, and it's led to lots of intense discussion about whether the era of designer babies was too close and needed to be headed off by regulation.

To discuss these and closely related issues were super fortunate to have with us, George Church.

George is the Robert Winthrop Professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

He also teaches at MIT.

He's been a central actor in the development of the technologies of gene editing and in applying them to the creation of new genomes.

He sometimes, in fact, calls himself a genome engineer.

George, thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, it's a great pleasure to be here, Noah.

Let's just start with the headline in order to make sense of what it really means

and whether there are dangers associated with it of the kind that many imagine.

We read in the paper that Hejanqui, a Chinese

scientist, says, or has it said about him, that he used CRISPRCast 9 to engineer the DNA of a couple

of babies and that they were then subsequently carried to term. That's what appears to be new here.

And he's been, the Chinese government's not very happy with him, and he has been under house

arrest and radio silence more or less since. From the standpoint of the state of CRISPR technology,

was there anything remarkable about the accomplishment, assuming it was accomplished, or is it

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