Bayer CEO Werner Baumann highlighted “less and less trust in society for advances in technology” as a hurdle for pharma companies working on gene editing during a panel on genetic modification and engineering that took place at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Baumann’s comments came after the panelists discussed He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who used CRISPR to create the world’s first gene-edited babies and faced international furor over the ethics of the procedure.
“It was a black mark on the entire field of science because it was done in this secretive way,” said Kevin Esvelt, Ph.D., a professor at MIT, during the session, titled “When humankind overrides evolution.” Beth Shapiro, D.Phil, of the University of California, Santa Cruz also joined the panel, while Magdalena Skipper, Ph.D., the editor-in-chief of Nature, moderated.