I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear and Vivian, conversations about connecting and communicating.

He thought he was going to be famous.

He thought he was going to be acclaimed and win a Nobel Prize and astound the world.

And he was only right in terms of astounding the world.

He was wrong on everything else.

To me the worst thing he did was do an experiment on people.

That is on people, on people, on embryos that were going to become babies, where the risks

were enormously greater than the benefits.

That's Hank Greeley talking about one of the scariest things that are now possible.

Editing the genes of humans in a way that changes can be carried down through generations,

without fully taking into account the risks.

Hank Greeley is a Stanford professor who explores the ethical issues raised by biological

and medical research.

His book, CRISPR People, focuses on an extraordinary experiment carried out by a Chinese doctor

named Hu Jain Quai.

This is a really fascinating story.

The experiment Dr. Hu did was unprecedented, right?

How did that come about?

There are a lot of interesting things that I think made this possible.

One was that Dr. Hu was highly sought after.

He was a brilliant young scientist trained in part in China.

He came to the US for his PhD and a postdoc, and the Chinese wanted to get him back.

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