Statement by the Organizing Committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing

This statement was released by the organizing committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong in 2018, immediately following the revelation of He Jiankui’s heritable genome editing experiments. Though a scandal was emerging, the statement does not repeat the language from the first summit statement about the need for “broad societal consensus” to proceed with heritable genome editing. Instead, it says that its clinical use “remains irresponsible at this time” and beings the work of anticipating a path forward. The authors argue that more research will begin to provide the necessary safety and efficacy data to define a translational pathway for heritable genome editing. They anticipate that public acceptability of the clinical use of heritable genome editing, and thus policy, will vary across jurisdictions, seemingly abandoning calls for global consensus.