Our relatively enlarged skulls are the result of a random mutation which gave some human/monkey, 2.4 million years ago, a diminutive, inferior jaw.(1) They would have looked like a freak at the time.

Russian scientists have bred dog-like creatures from wolves in the last century. In other words, they dont necessarily need to know which genes or pairings produce their desired results. Trial and error is sufficient. And I dont imagine every nation state is beholden to ethical standards. All they'd need is educated guesses, and then to select their desired traits from a litter of humans, euthanize the rest, and repeat. Hopefully this is not happening, as it makes me feel ill to think about.

Of course, human gestation and maturity has a longer turnover, but gene editing could produce accelerated results compared to classical breeding of traits.

1-https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040322/full/news040322-9.ht...

It does.

Medical check is a prerequisite for a marriage certificate. Children born outside marriage are doomed to nonpersonhood

The gene editing of embryoes, if successful, benefits only the unborn and their future generation. The political party (and those in charge) don't directly benefit - but they suffer the bad PR and backlash if failure happens.

The cost/benefit analysis tells me that this isn't worth risking at all.

Also it is almost directly the result of what the western powers (and Japan did) in that period that we have the incredibly strict ethics regime around medical research to this day.

I think when it comes any of this stuff the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle is the best framework we have at present.