Nobel laureate CRISPR-developer Jennifer Doudna discusses two primary ethical concerns surrounding the technology’s use: the need for internationally recognized regulations and the need to ensure that CRISPR-derived treatments are accessible worldwide. Despite the headline, in this brief interview, Doudna provides little perspective on how the latter might happen aside from addressing it at the level of “technical and scientific issues.” She displays a faith in widespread access to genome editing technologies as a public good that would be echoed at the Third International Summit in 2023.

This news item from Nature describes a new ethics statement from the State Council of China. Bioethicists read this statement as a response to the He Jiankui affair and his recent release from prison following a three-year sentence. The statement is the first publicized product of the National Science and Technology Ethics Committee that was established in the wake of the revelation of He’s experiments. It seeks to address the ambiguous nature of the regulatory environment in which He conducted his experiments.