Unlock the promise of safe, accessible, and powerful germline genetic engineering for humanity.
- Publicly present the case in favor of making human germline engineering technology soon.
- Work out and describe how to make this technology in a safe, socially beneficial, widely accessible, and effective way.
- Through dialogue with scientists, the public, and policymakers, create innovation-positive ethical guidelines and legal regulation for germline engineering.
- Generate social momentum and help potential funders, scientists, and entrepreneurs to coordinate.
- The potential benefits to human germline genetic engineering are enormous. This technology would enable parents to choose to have children who will be born with a solid genomic foundation for flourishing lives that help to mend the world. Children born this way could be given:
- protection from a wide variety of common diseases (e.g. coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, breast cancer), as well as rare genetic diseases;
- protection from many forms of severe mental illness (such as schizophrenia and major depression);
- a longer lifespan and healthspan;
- a perhaps clever, or creative, or courageous, or otherwise capable mind.
- There are many potential perils of human germline genetic engineering. These should be studied scientifically and discussed with the public, in order to safeguard against them. For example:
- If the technology is only available to wealthy or well-connected people, it would increase inequality by allowing only a few to have exceptionally healthy and capable children. Therefore, the technology should be developed rapidly to be low-cost and accessible in liberal regulatory regimes.
- Germline engineering technologies will involve making children from cells that aren't unmodified eggs and sperm. The modifications could introduce genetic or epigenetic aberrations that would make the child grow to be unhealthy or in pain. Therefore, any cell used to create a child must be rigorously checked for genomic and epigenomic competence to form a healthy embryo.
- Germline engineering will require an international scientific, technological, and social effort, which we encourage and aim to help with. With that said, as the world's liberal democratic superpower, the United States of America should lead the way on human germline genetic engineering, including enhancement. If America supports this technology while regulating its unsafe and unethical uses, we can show the world how to develop and apply it beneficially.
