This news piece in Nature reflects on recent developments in embryo research to point to the gap between the pace of scientific research and the abilities of regulatory institutions to keep up with new developments. It draws on the He Jiankui affair and the International Summits on Human Genome Editing as other examples of this problem. The author argues that the ideal solution is an agile regulatory process that can quickly respond to new developments while also being receptive to input from experts and non-experts alike.

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.