CRISPR People

Introduction ix
Part I: Background 1
1 Just What Did He Jiankui Do? 3
2 Human Germline Genome Editing— What Is It? 23
3 CRISPR— What Is It, Why Is It Important, and Who Will Benefit
from It? 33
4 Ethics Discussions of CRISPR’d Babies before He 49
5 The Law of CRISPR’d Babies before He 75
Part II: The Revelation and Its Aftermath 89
6 The He Experiment Revealed 91
7 The World Reacts— And So Does China 109
8 Who Knew What When? Revelations of Pre- Summit
Knowledge 121
Part III: Assessing and Responding to the He Experiment 145
9 Assessing the He Experiment 147
10 Responses 173
Part IV: Human Germline Genome Editing Generally— Now
What? 201
11 Is Human Germline Genome Editing Inherently Bad? 203
12 Could Human Germline Genome Editing Sometimes
Be Bad? 217
13 Just How Useful Is Human Germline Genome Editing? 225
14 How to Test Human Germline Genome Editing 247
15 The Big Decisions— And How to Make Them 269
Conclusion 293
Acknowledgments 295
Notes 299
Index 371

Henry T. Greely

Choice 2021 Outstanding Academic Title

CRISPR People is an accessible, clearly written, fact-filled analysis of a new biological frontier. Readers will come away not only with a deep understanding of CRISPR and how it works, but also with an appreciation of how a Chinese scientist created the first gene-edited humans and what that means for the rest of us. Greely believes that He s experiment was nothing less than a cross between bad fiction and reckless fiasco, shrouded in a deep fog of secrets. '" the Washington Post

"Packed with facts and analysis, Henry Greely s CRISPR People examines what He did, explains why Greely believes it was wrong, describes the world s reaction, and details what we can and should do about work like this in the future...Greely provides an exquisite view of the wide-ranging issues at play in this particular case."
Science

"In Crispr People, law professor and bioethicist Henry Greely provides a detailed framework for how to think about regulating to get the best out of Crispr, while avoiding a repeat of He s experiment with life... the book provides an academic map for how to think about the regulation we need.
Financial Times

"A serious and scholarly work."
The Economist 

"Greely, one of the US most-cited bioethicists, has spent close to a decade contemplating how society might handle gene-edited humans. But the He Jiankui affair cast his many nebulous concerns into concrete form. In this book, which he says lies somewhat uneasily between history and journalism, Greely goes deep into the aftermath of the 2018 revelations and lays out in lawyerly detail the big questions now facing the future of Crispr technology."
WIRED

"What does it mean to rebuild people through gene editing or other medical interventions? CRISPR People by Henry T. Greely, an ethics and law professor at Stanford University in California, dives in at the deep