J. Benjamin Hurlbut

Research ethics: Treat donors as partners in biobank research.

Proposed rules to protect research subjects will impede progress, say Krishanu Saha and J. Benjamin Hurlbut. Instead, give donors more say in how samples are used.

Limits of Responsibility: Genome Editing, Asilomar, and the Politics of Deliberation

On April 3, 2015, a group of prominent biologists and ethicists called for a worldwide moratorium on human genetic engineering in which the genetic modifications would be passed on to future generations. Describing themselves as “interested stakeholders,” the group held a retreat in Napa, California, in January to “initiate an informed discussion” of CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering technology, which could enable high-precision insertion, deletion, and recoding of genes in human eggs, sperm, and embryos. The group declared that the advent of a technology that makes human germ-line genetic engineering plausible makes a corollary discussion of its ethical implications urgent. Echoing this sentiment, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine have announced plans to convene an international summit in fall 2015 to assess the implications of CRISPR/Cas9. Yet the notion that the advent of this particular technology is the warrant for initiating a public discussion is remarkable, and so too is the idea that the experts who have brought it into being and are putting it to use are best positioned to define the terms of the debate. The relevant ethical questions are by no means specific, let alone subsidiary, to the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. They are longstanding questions about what features of human life ought not be taken as objects of manipulation and control. They are questions about our responsibilities to our children and our childrens children, where the mark of our actions will be inscribed upon their bodies and their lives.

A global observatory for gene editing

Sheila Jasanoff and J. Benjamin Hurlbut call for an international network of scholars and organizations to support a new kind of conversation. Sheila Jasanoff and J. Benjamin Hurlbut call for an international network of scholars and organizations to support a new kind of conversation. Illustration by Marina Muun

Reimagining responsibility in synthetic biology

With the promise to address societal challenges by engineering life, synthetic biology claims the authority to declare what technological futures are possible, desirable, and good. This represents a reimagination and reordering of responsibilities of governance that demands public assessment and deliberation. Yet dominant approaches to assessing social and ethical issues in the biosciences generally neglect the role of scientific authority in configuring responsibilities of governance. This essay offers a diagnosis of this failure and suggestions to address it.

Revisiting the Warnock rule.

The seminal 1984 Warnock Report1 established that research on human embryos should be limited to the first 14 days of development (Box 1). Since that time, the rule has been broadly adopted and adhered to across the research community. With the introduction of new methodologies into human embryology, however, our ability to culture human embryos in vitro has progressed rapidly, to the point where we now are reaching the 14-day Rubicon. In August 2016, two groups in the UK and in the US reported experiments on human embryos that were sustained in culture for 12–13 days after fertilization2,3. To comply with British law, the UK lab destroyed its embryo on the 13th day. In the following article, Nature Biotechnology brings together a group of experts to discuss whether, in the light of these advances, it is now time to reassess the 14-day rule.

Building Capacity for a Global Genome Editing Observatory: Conceptual Challenges

A new infrastructure is urgently needed at the global level to facilitate exchange on key issues concerning genome editing. We advocate the establishment of a global observatory to serve as a center for international, interdisciplinary, and cosmopolitan reflection. This article is the first of a two-part series.

Building Capacity for a Global Genome Editing Observatory: Institutional Design

A new infrastructure is urgently needed at the global level to facilitate exchange on key issues concerning genome editing. We advocate the establishment of a global observatory to serve as a center for international, interdisciplinary, and cosmopolitan reflection. This article is the second of a two-part series.

Response to Beriain

Professor Beriains criticism rests on a narrow conception of human dignity pertaining only to individuals within a society. The social relations and norms that underpin human dignity are treated as mere group interests that are secondary to the dignity of the individual. In our view, this is a false dichotomy.

Technologies of Governance: Science, State and Citizen in Visions of the Bioeconomy

This chapter examines visions of the bioeconomy , exploring how these visions construct biotechnological innovation as urgently necessary to guard against a host of global-scale risks, and as reflecting and requiring particular relationships between science , state and citizen. The chapter argues that such visions of the bioeconomy reflect an imaginary of innovation -as-governance wherein technoscience is positioned the primary agent capable of enhancing social wellbeing, with corresponding requirements for the state to facilitate this function. The chapter analyzes bioeconomy strategies published by the United States and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD ) together with FDA regulation of AquAdvantage Salmon to illustrate how this imaginary informs both political agendas and regulatory practices, including the manner in which public ambivalence to biotechnology is negotiated in these contexts.

Revisiting the Warnock rule (vol 35, pg 1029, 2017)

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/nbt.4015.