U.S. attitudes on human genome editing

The emergence of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing has given new urgency to calls from social scientists, bench scientists, and scientific associations for broad public dialogue about human genome editing and its applications. Most recently, these calls were formalized in a consensus report on the science, ethics, and governance of human genome editing released by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) that argued for public engagement to be incorporated into the policy-making process for human genome editing ( 1 ). So, where does the public stand on the issue of human genome editing? And how do those attitudes translate into the desire for more public input on human genome editing as new applications emerge in the policy arena?