The platforming of human embryo editing: prospecting “disease free” futures

Abstract

In November 2018, a scientific scandal broke when news emerged that the world’s first gene edited babies had been born in China on the eve of the 2nd International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong. He Jiankui had recruited a total of seven couples who were in need of fertility treatment to participate in an effort to clinically apply human embryo editing with the promise that, if successful, their future children would be protected from HIV. While He Jiankui has since been jailed for illegal medical practice and much has been written about his unethical and flawed “experiment,” in this article we suggest that the Hong Kong summit nevertheless marked the moment when human embryo editing came to be platformed. Human embryo editing brings together a complete set of new reproductive and genetic technologies into a total bio-reproductive platform shaped by socio-technical “disease free” imaginaries.

Keywords:

• gene editing
• selective reproduction
• biomedical platforms
• bioethics

Disclosure statement

Ayo Wahlberg was an invited Chair at the 2nd International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong for a session on “Global Perspectives: Somatic and Germline Therapy, Prevention, and Enhancement Applications” given his many years of experience of research on selective reproduction.

Notes

1 Parts of this ethnographic account were previously published as a “Changing (In)fertilities” blog post in the days after the Hong Kong summit (see https://www.cifp.sociology.cam.ac.uk/blog/did-human-embryo-editing-just-get-platformed).