Global Observatory for Genome Editing International Summit

Genome editing raises fundamental questions of the dignity and integrity of human life. How should we respond?

Join us in Cambridge for the 2025 International Summit of the Global Observatory for Genome Editing. A rich mix of speakers, panels, and events representing diverse disciplines, cultures, and social standpoints will discuss biotechnologies that are altering the meaning of being human.

The three-day Summit expands the range of experience and perspectives that should have a voice in these conversations. It aims to offer new foundations for deliberating on biotechnology as a force for human progress. For more information, visit the Summit website.

Info: Summit introduction: overview and key aims.

Info: Performers: Pigeonwing Dance Company

Info: Ten years into the CRISPR era and 50 years since Asilomar, what progress has been made—in biology, law, policy, politics, religion, and ethics—to govern our growing technical ability to control the building blocks of human heredity and life? What further work most urgently needs to be done?

Info: Summit mission and objectives.

Info: How is the capacity to genetically edit bodies or make heritable changes changing our conceptions of health and disease? Do these changes create new tensions between individual and population health? Between therapy and enhancement? Do they adequately grapple with genetic diversity and global economic inequality?

Info: The CRISPR era has brought new abilities—and ambitions—to engineer life. Biotechnologies enable the construction of human embryo-like entities, human-animal chimeras, and other artificial entities that resemble features of biological humanness. As technical barriers are broken, what ethical limits are needed, and how do we find them? What do these powerful techniques mean for academic freedom and responsibility, commercial applications, justice and social progress?

Info: Are intellectual property and capital steering genome editing and related biotechnology innovations toward serving the public good? What opportunities or challenges do concentrations of capital or proprietary control pose for innovation and the distribution of its risks and benefits? Should there be limits to commodification—of techniques, of products, of human and non-human life—and who should set them?

Info: Modern biotechnologies are poised to alter what it means to be human. In deliberating on how to govern these technologies, how can we foster a “cosmopolitan ethics”: one that affirms diversity, aspires to mutual understanding, is committed to deep, sustained, inclusive engagement with matters of collective moral concern, and favors a posture of humility? What are the impediments and frictions?

Info: Governance of genome editing has become more inclusive in some respects, but significant asymmetries remain: between North and South, between researchers and patients, and between scientific agendas and societies’ needs. What conceptions dominate and which ideas tend to be excluded? What reforms are needed to make space for alternative visions of technological innovation and the public good?

Info: Genome editing and related biotechnologies run up against questions of human integrity, meaning and purpose that science alone cannot address. How should science and technology productively converse with other sources of moral authority, including religion, law, ethics, and medical practice? What are the greatest frictions or barriers?

Info: Many mechanisms and institutions have sought to guide the responsible development of genome editing: ethics committees, scientific journals, public consultation, citizens juries, and international summits. How should we assess the successes and failures of these models, especially with respect to making norms that are likely to affect all of humanity? What structures, practices, and assumptions constrain participation and/or inhibit improvements in governance?

Info: If the human genome is “the common heritage of humankind,” then governance must be a global responsibility. How should global governance institutions assert authority over life sciences and technologies that reach into matters as intimate and personal as health and reproduction? What are the primary responsibilities and limits of global governance institutions?

Info: Biotechnology promises to reduce disease, liberate humans from disability, and build more sustainable ecosystems. Unwisely used or left ungoverned, biotechnology can also degrade human lives by reducing diversity, impeding innovation, and centralizing control. How should we reimagine futures in which biotechnology better serves societal visions of the good?

Host or Publisher Global Observatory for Genome Editing