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In November 2016, Pomerantz and Debra Mathews, assistant director for science programs at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, hosted a Baltimore Science Cafe at a Baltimore bookstore to discuss CRISPR and the impact of genome editing. The event drew a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 100 people, a mix of Johns Hopkins students and science-interested Baltimore residents. “Ninety-nine percent of what we talked about were the ethical implications,” Pomerantz says. They asked questions about the potential to modify the human genome, make designer babies, and correct inherited diseases. Many in the audience wondered, Pomerantz says, how the technology could be monitored and regulated, and who should regulate it. The FDA? Some other governmental agency or council? What if other countries don’t regulate it with all the same safeguards as us, and allow the human genome to be irrevocably altered?

Mathews, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine, published a paper in Nature in November 2015 called “CRISPR: A path through the thicket.” In the paper, Mathews and colleagues laid out some key points for consideration as various advisory bodies, scientific organizations, and funding agencies deliberate genome editing in humans. The paper came on the heels of a meeting of the Hinxton Group—a network of scientists, ethicists, policymakers, journal editors, and funders—to address the ethical and policy issues around the editing of the human genome in the early stages of development and in germline cells. Should genome editing be allowed in basic research involving human sperm, eggs, and embryos? What safety precautions should be met before we consider it? And what uses for genome editing in human reproductive applications might be permissible? “We wanted to create a set of defensible recommendations and establish a model regulatory framework that could be adopted internationally. Develop a road map for basic research,” Mathews says.

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Image: Illustration by Ryan Peltier via Johns Hopkins Magazine

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