Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies

On the one hand, hurray for them for trying to eliminate a couple of quite serious diseases.

On the other hand, we have very little clue what the long term effects of not having CCR5 will be for these children. Furthermore, do we really trust China to start messing with people's DNA? I could think up several uses for this that are downright dangerous in the hands of a country like China.

Some of them:

- Remove a key gene in a metabolic pathway which can be mitigated by dietary supplements, creating a biological dead man's switch in order to make it easier to control the population.

- Inserting a viral genome into the host genome (preferably also under some deadman's switch), creating in effect a biological weapon

They have no ethics whereas it is for privacy or human tests. Of course having no ethics is the easy way to get a technological advantage over others that have some. And it's going to drive all country to do the same (like how US and China surveillance drove other countries to do the same). It's sad to see the world going towards exactly the dystopia described in sci-fi : total surveillance, data about anyone's whole life, AI discriminating people in their everyday life based on those data, and soon some people stronger / more resistant / more handsome than other because their rich parents payed the prenium gene editing package (and how many failed-babies experiment to get there ?).

But people are happy about it because less terrorism and less diseases right ?

So, to take this to a logical conclusion...

Their Social Ranking is used to identify individuals with appealing DNA, and that DNA is used to make future model citizens.

The Chinese are so advanced... I get the feeling with how rapid they are that we're going to be following in their footsteps rather than leading.