Abstract

The chapter gives a short background to the ethical debates surrounding the gene editing tool CRISPR. It discusses the early worries and alarm bells when the first studies came out that demonstrated that heritable germline editing on humans was realistically possible as well as the subsequent calls for ethics. Three key distinctions that has done a lot of moral boundary work in this debate are presented: between somatic and germline interventions; between research and clinical application; and between therapy and enhancement.