Beyond Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster: Human Germline Editing and the Implications of Waiting to Regulate

From the birth of bioethics in the United States to the hindrance of advancement caused by laws that claim to remove barriers to innovation, CRISPR and its germline editing abilities simply cannot live up to their full potential in the United States unless current limitations are lifted and a more reasonable approach is taken. While scientific acronyms and analogies to scissors and word processing functions abound in CRISPR-related articles, many focus on the patent for the technology itself. Few seek to resolve the discord that abounds in federal regulations of this emerging biotechnology. This Comment seeks to do just that and advocates for the adoption of the 2017 American Society of Human Genetics position statement as a rational and research-based approach.