“We’re trying to plan the world we’re going to leave for our children,” he said. “Is it a world where we’re deeply thoughtful about medical applications, and we’re using it in serious cases, or is it a world where we just have rampant commercial competition?” Zhang made the point that the issues surrounding gene editing needed to be settled by society as a whole and not by individuals. “You can imagine a situation where parents will feel pressure to edit their children because other parents are,” he said. “It could further exacerbate inequality. It could create a total mess in society.”
