Twentieth-century science education and 21st-century genetic engineering technologies: A toxic mix

ABSTRACT

I challenge the “convenient consensus” that He Jiankui is a “bad apple” in order to consider alternative explanations for why He may have ventured down the ill-considered path in his research that he did. The answer I want to proffer is that He was ill-equipped by his education and training in biomedical research to appropriately weigh the competing goods he encountered and thus was not able to be swayed by the clear guidance that basic ethical considerations would have provided. If true, this shows us why, much as we would like to take solace in him being a bad apple, we should be prompted by this episode to focus instead on systems level contributors to He’s decisions that, if left unaddressed, will surely lead to similarly reckless episodes by other researchers in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Genetics and ethics
• human subjects ethics
• legal and regulatory issues in research
• mentoring
• misconduct in research
• public trust
• RCR education and instruction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.