Forks in the road: Françoise Baylis on ethics,genome editing,and the world we want to live in

Background

In October 2024, on a high-speed train from Beijing to Shanghai, Professor Françoise Baylis, distinguished research professor emerita at Dalhousie University, president of the Royal Society of Canada (2025‒2028), and one of the world's most influential voices in bioethics—sat down with Yan Ping of Dalian University of Technology and Gao Lu of Tsinghua University for a four-hour conversation. Also on the journey was Professor Luis Campos, historian of science at Rice University. The group was traveling to the International Symposium on Science and Technology Ethics, organized by the Academic Divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. ¹

Setting the stage and asking the right questions

Baylis, the author of Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing (Baylis, 2019), has been deeply engaged with the International Summits on Human Genome Editing. In this conversation, she reflects on the evolution of the summit's debates, the shifting global discourse on heritable human genome editing, and the tensions between scientific ambition and ethical responsibility.

Q: ² Let's begin with the three international summits on human genome editing (2015 in Washington DC, USA, 2018 in Hong Kong, China, 2023 in London, UK). It seems that, from your perspective, the dominant themes at the respective summits were ‘broad societal consensus on human heritable genome editing’ at the first summit, ‘translational pathways for human heritable genome editing’ at the second summit, and ‘equitable development/access for human somatic genome editing’ at the third summit. Does this reading make sense? Can you talk us through the background and evolution of the three summits?

Baylis: In a dynamic field, there are many ways to answer this question. The thematic overview provided is a legitimate way of understanding what happened; it aligns with how I might interpret events (Baylis, 2023, 2025). But it's important to recognize that others will tell a story differently. For me, what matters is the emphasis, at the outset, on ‘broad societal consensus’. That phrase gets used for the first time in the specific context of discussion/debate about the ethics of human genome editing in the closing statement of the first international summit in 2015 (National Academies, 2015). To my knowledge, this is also one of the first times those words appear together in the bioethics literature. The emphasis on ‘broad societal consensus’ is significant.

Shortly after the first summit, people tried to change the language. For example, instead of ‘broad societal consensus’, they talked about ‘broad scientific consensus’. Someone like me, who is paying attention to language, saw this as an attempt to be perceived as agreeing with the initial commitment without really agreeing—there is a huge difference between ‘broad societal consensus’ and ‘broad scientific consensus’.

The idea of a ‘translational pathway forward’ for human heritable genome editing comes later; it is of central importance at the second summit. As concerns this issue, it is interesting to note the tension between the revelation (in advance of the second summit) that He Jiankui had created genome-edited babies and the summit's closing statement that both condemns He's translation research (from clinical trial to practice) and at the same time calls for a ‘pathway forward’ (National Academies, 2018). The organizing committee that issued the closing statement didn’t say, ‘we don’t yet have broad societal consensus, so why did you do this?’ As such, the criticism of He's research wasn’t anchored in the 2015 closing statement; it was anchored in the solo event. Only three years had passed between the first and second summits. Nothing dramatic had changed in the science, but the narrative had shifted considerably. This reveals how quickly the frame of a conversation can change and how events can reshape discussions.

The first summit happened very quickly, nominally in response to research published in April 2015 (Liang et al., 2015). I was invited to sit on the organizing committee in late summer 2015. Our first planning meeting happened in early October, and the summit was held in early December. The summit hosts tried to do things differently: they involved the media early on; they made the meeting available online in real time (something unusual in 2015); and they made the meeting accessible to people with physical or hearing impairments (the meeting was live-streamed and closed-captioning was provided). There was live-tweeting and social-media reporting. Indeed, this was the first time I attended a meeting in person and simultaneously followed conversations about the meeting on Twitter. This was fascinating because there were conversations happening online that were not happening in the room. Four thousand people watched online. That was huge.

A different tone in Hong Kong and London

Q: Do you think the three summits had different tones?

Baylis: The second summit, held in Hong Kong in 2018, was very different from the first summit held in Washington in 2015. The second summit was originally to have been held in China's mainland, but it was moved to Hong Kong. I didn’t attend in person; I watched online from my home in Canada in the middle of the night. There was considerable global attention on this meeting because a few days prior to the meeting the world had learned that gene-edited babies had been created by a Chinese researcher—He Jiankui.

I saw He's presentation and the audience's reactions. From my perspective, there was some ‘grandstanding’: people stood up and were critical without reflecting on how their criticisms of He Jiankui could apply equally to work done in Western countries. Consider, for example, criticisms about the consent process. Some of the outrage seemed performative. A rhetorical condemnation without self-reflection doesn’t advance the conversation. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been outraged; I would have been, because I strongly support broad societal consensus. I would have asked He Jiankui (and any other scientist), ‘What makes you think you can decide this on your own? It's not your decision to make.’

The third summit, in London in 2023, attempted to shift some of the focus from heritable genome editing to somatic genome editing while shining a light on ‘equitable development and access’. Heritable genome editing was still on the agenda, but there was an attempt to say there are more issues we must pay attention to. Some people criticized this shift, saying it avoided the prime contentious issue. My view is that it acknowledged that nearly 10 years had passed since the first summit and that, while heritable genome editing was still a distant imagining, somatic genome editing was a reality with the anticipated move from clinical trials to therapeutic interventions for living patients. How could we not pay attention to the relevant contemporary ethical issues surrounding the use of this technology? Heritable genome editing, by contrast, remained somewhat in the realm of science fiction.

What happened between the summits?

Q: Then what really happened between the three summits?

Baylis: Between the summits, there was a great deal of work by individual scholars, scientists, national bodies and professional societies. After the second summit, for example, in 2019, a paper was published calling for a moratorium on human heritable genome editing (Lander et al., 2019). The authors included several members of the original planning committee from the first summit, and scholars from different disciplines and different countries were invited to join the call for a moratorium. Three scientists, widely regarded as the CRISPR pioneers—Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Feng Zhang—were invited to sign on. Only two of the three did so. Other scientists who were members of the planning committee, like David Baltimore, also did not sign on. These missing signatures matter historically.

The final statement from the first summit did not explicitly call for a moratorium. If you read the text, it doesn’t use this word. But to my mind, this was clearly a call for a moratorium by another name. Indeed, The New York Times headline the next day used the word ‘moratorium’ (Wade, 2015). So, even if the word wasn’t used, the substantive content clearly pointed the way.

For me, a moratorium is a temporary halt, not a ban. It buys time: time to reflect, time to perhaps advance the science, time to build broad societal consensus. By 2019, to remove any possible doubt about the call for a moratorium, like-minded people made the call explicit: ‘Adopt a moratorium’ (Lander et al., 2019). As a result of this publication, some believe there is a moratorium on human heritable genome editing, but strictly speaking there isn’t. No binding pause has been formally endorsed (and, in any case, who would have the authority to endorse and monitor a moratorium?).

One constant across all three summits is the emphasis on ‘safety and efficacy’. No one wants to say, ‘We can do this even if it is not safe and efficacious.’ Scientists want to be responsible (and be seen to be responsible), and they want to maintain control. They want to define the standards and be the ones to assess whether those standards have been met. Because of my training, I don’t see safety and efficacy as purely scientific criteria. There's a value system underlying them. It's always ‘safe’ relative to something and ‘efficacious’ relative to something [else]. No intervention will ever be 100% safe and efficacious. Someone has to decide when it's safe enough, and efficacious enough. ‘Enough’ is a value-based criterion. We need to be transparent about that. We shouldn’t allow the standard of ‘safety and efficacy’ to collapse into purely factual assessments when they are not. And we should not let scientists be the only ones to decide when standards have been met.

Revisiting the role of individual scientists

Q: Before the first summit, a team led by Huang Junjiu in China published research that raised concerns about whether genome editing experiments should be done in human embryos. What are your thoughts on this research?

Baylis: Well, an interesting thing you may not know about me is that my PhD thesis was on the ethics of using nonviable human embryos in research. This is relevant because the research done by Huang and colleagues—which is the first reported research use of human embryos using CRISPR genome editing technology—was done in nonviable human embryos. An excerpt of my thesis was published in the journal Bioethics in 1990 (Baylis, 1990). That article, published nearly 35 years ago, remains relevant today.

Getting back to your question, however, about the research published by Huang, arguably it is his work that sparked the global conversation on the ethics of human germline genome editing. Now admittedly this happened in a roundabout way. Huang originally submitted the paper published in Protein and Cell to both Nature and Science. Both of these journals rejected the paper, and yet they then each published commentaries that I think can fairly be described as ‘in anticipation’ of the article by Huang. To be clear, neither of the commentaries in Nature and Science name Huang. Instead, they ask and answer the general question ‘Should we do this [human heritable genome editing] research?’ Some scientists said ‘no’ emphatically (Nature paper, see Lanphier et al., 2015); other scientists said ‘we need a prudent pathway forward’ (Science paper, see Baltimore et al., 2015). Thereafter, plans were made to host the first international summit.

Governance beyond laws

Q: Let's talk about global governance in the context of these summits. I understand that the first summit was intended as a step towards global governance of human genome editing. How do you see the governance process developing?

Baylis: Nothing happens in isolation. The summits are anchors, and things happen in between. Countries, professional organizations, patient groups and public-interest groups position themselves with reference to these (and other) anchors.

In recent years, our understanding of governance has broadened. Early on, people thought of governance as clear research guidelines, or laws permitting or forbidding certain things, or international treaties. At the 2015 summit, there were formal documents submitted for consideration by UNESCO and by civil society. Different interest groups asserted their understanding of risks, potential benefits and priorities. People referred to the ‘Oviedo Convention’.

The broadest statement on governance that I know of in this space is the one issued by the World Health Organization: ‘Framework for Governance of Genome Editing’ (WHO, 2021). It unpacks the word ‘policy’ and has included international declarations and treaties; national laws and research guidelines; professional guidelines; education systems; patents; and publications. It recognizes that all these mechanisms can helpfully constrain or encourage behavior. Governance is not just about laws; it's also about mechanisms and responsibilities. Research funders can regulate by deciding whether to fund certain research. Publishers can regulate by deciding whether to publish certain articles. Patent offices can incentivize some research and discourage other research by the rules they enforce. Educational systems shape the next generation. If we want to govern human genome editing, we need to think about all these levers (and more).

This is important in the modern world. Otherwise, we invest a lot of resources in treaties and declarations that may not work. Treaties may not work because there is increasing distrust among nation-states. We are no longer in a postwar moment where people want to bridge differences and are eager to find ways to work together. There is also a new private–public reality that must be addressed. Private companies have enormous resources and capabilities, and they operate across borders. So old mechanisms narrowly focused on nations may not suffice.

The role of ethicists and the politics of science

Q: As an ethicist, you have had an impact on several summits. Did you feel pressure from the scientists?

Baylis: Yes. There is pressure. Sometimes it is direct, sometimes subtle and maybe even inadvertent. You are invited to a meeting organized by scientists and funded by scientific bodies. There is an expectation that you will be constructive, that you will not block ‘progress’. Some scientists frame ethics as a public-relations exercise: help us manage public perception, and help us to better explain what we are doing and why it is important. This is not ethics, however. Ethics should first ask and answer questions about whether we should do something at all, before considering the ways in which it might be possible to do something ethically. But that question [the ‘whether’ question] is often unwelcome because many scientists already assume the project under scrutiny is worthy. They want the ethicist to manage discussion and debate, not to question the project itself.

David Baltimore, who chaired the first and second summits, has been clear about his view on the need to avoid the language of a moratorium (Saey, 2019). But his view wasn’t the unanimous view of members of the organizing committees. There were varied perspectives. As I have said before, while the final statement from the first summit did not use that word ‘moratorium’, that does not mean there was not a widely agreed upon call for what others might call a pause. Anyone reading the closing statement might well interpret it that way. At the second summit, at the beginning, Baltimore said the birth of genome-edited twins was deeply problematic, and he quoted the final statement from the first summit. Feng Zhang also quoted it. But by the end of the second summit, things had changed, as evidenced by the call for a transitional pathway forward in the closing statement.

Incentives, success and being first

Q: Some scientists think He Jiankui chose the wrong disease to ‘cure’. He should have chosen something like heart disease or diabetes, and this would have resulted in less criticism. They call him ‘clever but wrong’. How do you view such opinions, especially from younger scientists?

Baylis: This question invites us to reflect on the incentives in science. Science rewards being first. It does so, for example, with publication in high-impact journals, Nobel (and other) prizes and positive media coverage. People like me question that system because it perpetuates the false notion that knowledge production is individual when science is team-based. Individual scientists may have great ideas, but teams are needed to realize these ideas. Yet we reward individuals. We reward being first. That system shapes how young scientists think. The incentive structure encourages risky behavior. We need to rethink what success looks like. Success should be about contributing to a better world. We need to value collaboration, openness and benefit to society, not just being first or publishing in a prestigious journal.

He Jiankui has been called a ‘rogue scientist’ by many (see, e.g., Fraser, 2018). I share Ben Hurlbut's view that this labeling is misguided. He Jiankui did what all young scientists are trained to do: to be at the forefront, to make a name for himself. Even now (after his release from prison), He Jiankui tries to do that—to be first. He is saying he wants to publish his ‘ground-breaking’ research. Many scientists insist that his research isn’t sound, and for this reason it shouldn’t be published. What are the relevant standards? Traditionally, we publish good science and good ethics. If there are serious reservations about both the science and the ethics, why publish? (Baylis, 2020)

Heritable genome editing cannot cure anything

Q: Then what do you think genome editing should do to better benefit the society?

Baylis: Heritable genome editing isn’t about cures. The reason is simple: there is no person/patient with an illness who is suffering and in need of a cure—someone who can make a claim on society for care. Somatic genome editing can offer treatments (and possible cures): if a child is born with a genetic disease, and you edit their somatic cells, you are treating (possibly curing) that child. Heritable genome editing doesn’t involve persons/patients. What it offers is the possibility of creating a future human with or without certain traits depending upon what is considered valuable; it does not treat an existing being. The goal of improving humanity by manipulating the germline raises ethical concerns as this technology is not about curing disease but about choosing which people should exist.

Use of this technology encourages eugenic thinking, because it ultimately invites people to decide which lives are more or less valuable. There might be initial agreement on some very dramatic (life-limiting) conditions that are worth eliminating, but over time there very likely would be less and less agreement about which diseases or disabilities should be eradicated, and which conditions should be accepted as simple differences.

In making decisions about when to use genetic modification, we will be actively changing the world in which we live from one that is accepting of chance and diversity into a world where it is normal to decide who should be created with which traits. For the record, there are ways of having children that avoid the disease scenario without resorting to heritable genome editing. For example, if prospective parents want to avoid passing on a genetic condition to their offspring, there are existing technologies that can be used to screen pre-implantation embryos, after which decisions can be made to selectively transfer unaffected ones.

There is no compelling medical need for heritable genome editing. There may be a good reason to do heritable genome editing, but I haven’t heard of one as yet.

Bringing together a body of work

Baylis explained why she wrote Altered Inheritance. It was an opportunity to bring together many threads of her academic research at a time when her career was shifting towards international policy work. More generally, she was interested in helping other people pursue their substantive research rather than taking on new projects of her own. The book enabled her to collate decades of thought on impact ethics. The themes she discusses in the book—slow science, responsible bioethics, and the roles and responsibilities of scientists—apply beyond gene editing. Her core argument is that we spend too much time on secondary (downstream) questions and not enough time on the primary question: ‘What kind of world do we want to live in?’

Baylis: I’ve often told people that I probably won’t write another book because I have nothing else to say. Everything I know is in my book Altered Inheritance. The primary question for me is: ‘what kind of world do we want to live in?’ Only when we know the answer to that question should we move on to the second question: ‘how will this technology help me (us) build that world?’ I find it is frustrating that many people in bioethics ask, ‘How can I do this ethically?’ instead of asking, ‘Is it ethical to do this?’ The latter is the more challenging question, and many people shy away from it. My plea is to start at the beginning: decide what kind of world we want, then consider whether a given technology fits into that vision. That is the essence of slow science and responsible ethics.

Treatment and enhancement

Q: In Altered Inheritance, you make the provocative point that the difference between ‘treatment’ and ‘enhancement’ is often meaningless. Could you explain what you mean by that?

Baylis: Much of the literature assumes that if what you’re trying to do is a treatment, then it is a good thing, and if what you’re trying to do [is] an enhancement, then it is bad or at least problematic. I want to challenge that assumption. There are treatments that are not good, and there may be enhancements that are good. The dichotomy—‘treatment good, enhancement bad’—is sloppy thinking.

Q: So you’re saying the terms themselves shouldn’t determine the moral judgement?

Baylis: Exactly. You shouldn’t let those terms do the moral work for you. You have to do the moral work yourself by unpacking the goals and objectives. A technology that others call a treatment might, in my view, actually be an enhancement—and it might be good or bad depending on what it seeks to do.

Q: What should guide the ethical assessment, then?

Baylis: The key is to ask: What is the goal? Does it make sense? Does it align with your vision of a good life? For me, the label is not what matters; the underlying values do.

Ethics is not lagging behind science; it asks different questions

Baylis rejects the idea that ethics lags behind science. She maintains that the claim that science is outpacing (and thus surpassing) ethics is not just incorrect but disingenuous.

Baylis: In chapter 5 of Altered Inheritance, called ‘Ethics in the interim’, I argue that we have had considerable time to reflect on the ethical significance of manipulating the human genome. Some say we have not used that time wisely. They complain that ethical thinking has not kept pace with science. But what does that mean? Saying ‘science surpasses ethics’ or ‘ethics lags behind science’ is not only incorrect; it is insincere. Such statements often mean, ‘ethics is hindering scientific progress’. Why assume science is the reference point? Why should ethics keep pace with science? Why shouldn’t science keep pace with ethics? Science is a human activity that should be informed by ethics.

We have decades of literature on the ethics of creating new humans. We have decades of discussion about human cloning. Ethics isn’t lagging behind; science just doesn’t like the answers ethics offers. There is frustration because ethicists point out problems. Scientists want to move quickly; ethicists say we need to stop and think (long and hard) before we act.

Dual-use science and the limits of control

Q: Many developments in science and technology—like artificial intelligence or drones—are seen as burdens of state power. Drones were once seen as civilian tools; now they are used in wars. In a movie, terrorists use genetic weapons to control the world. If genome editing can be weaponized and enters global geopolitical competition, is there any possibility to control it? Can ethics stop science from being misused?

Baylis: Many scientists will tell you that any scientific discovery can be used for good or for evil. You should not point to the potential for evil as a way of stopping the potential for good. You can use a hammer to build a house or to kill someone. You can also use a hammer as a gavel if you are a judge, to insist on justice. The point is: technology is not inherently good or evil. How it is used depends on humans. So what matters is the human, not the technology. Once you understand that, you can start thinking about governance differently. Instead of focusing only on prohibiting a technology, you can helpfully focus on influencing human behavior. How do you incentivize people to use a technology responsibly? How do you create norms that discourage misuse? How do you build systems that monitor and mitigate potential harms?

You will never be able to control every individual. But you can create norms and institutions that make misuse less likely. You can encourage people to share values of care and justice. You can stigmatize harmful uses of technology. You can ensure scientists think about the implications of their work. You can create transparency and accountability.

Challenges in global governance: Pandemic, conflict and building community

When asked about two challenges—achieving dialogue across different ethical, religious, cultural, social, political, legal and scientific perspectives, and moving from public education to public empowerment—Baylis acknowledges that these challenges remain acute.

Baylis: During the past five years we have experienced a pandemic and regional wars. These experiences have shown us how we sometimes fail to care for each other. But during these challenging times, there have been stories of communities coming together and forming new connections. The world is always in transition; the key is not to be disheartened. We must remain committed to positive goals and objectives even when setbacks occur.

Governance is not only top-down but also bottom-up. We must keep doing the work of building and extending community so that we have a sense of care and compassion for those around us and even for those we do not know. Why do wars happen? In part, because we see others as fundamentally different; we don’t see ourselves as connected to each other. Building trust means engaging with people who are different, finding common ground and recognizing our shared humanity. We may never achieve ‘broad societal consensus’, but we will be better off for having tried.

Building broad consensus and empowering the public

Q: How can we achieve broad societal consensus on genome editing and other transformative technologies?

Baylis: Broad consensus is a process: it involves global dialogue, exchanging different perspectives and values with mutual respect, building trust, and brainstorming about how to use science and technology for a better world. How we communicate and make decisions is as important as the decisions themselves. My target audience is the human family—all of us.

We must always be willing to talk to each other even when we disagree fundamentally. Some people are unable, unwilling or uninterested in dialogue. But progress requires talking to people we don’t know, don’t understand, and may disagree with. By way of example, sometimes colleagues have told me not to go to certain countries because of how they treat women. I respond: ‘I’m a woman. If they invite me to speak and I don’t go, how does that help other women?’

I know ‘broad societal consensus’ may never be reached, but I believe that we will all be better off for having tried to work towards consensus. The attempt itself teaches us about each other and may reveal common ground. Even if we never fully agree, we may understand that there are different ways of knowing and understanding; those with whom we disagree may not all [be] crazy or wrong. As a result of trying to build consensus, we may become more open. What would that be like? It would be very different from the world we live in now.

Q: In your book, you identified two major global policy challenges: effective dialogue across diverse perspectives and moving from public education to public empowerment. How do you see these today?

Baylis: The pandemic highlighted how we fail in our commitments to care for each other, but it also provided examples of communities coming together. Wars show how quickly people can dehumanize others. We always need to ask: can we keep our eye on the ball? Can we recognize there will be setbacks, but maintain our goals? The challenge is not to become disheartened or cynical or pessimistic—it is easy to be all three.

If we are looking at governance, we have to think of it as both top-down and bottom-up. Top-down governance includes laws, regulations and international agreements. Bottom-up governance is about community building, public engagement and social norms. We need both. We need to extend community so we have care and compassion for those around us—including people we don’t know or who are far away.

We also need to distinguish between ‘public education’ and ‘public empowerment’. Education means informing people. Empowerment means enabling them to participate and have a say. In many places, public engagement is tokenistic. People are asked to comment on decisions that have already been made. That is not empowerment. To empower the public, you must share power. That means scientists and policymakers must be willing to cede control. They must listen to voices they might not agree with. They must recognize that people have different world views, different values and different religions. Effective dialogue is hard work. It requires trust. And trust is in short supply.

Rethinking ethics, governance and success in science

Q: How does your approach to ethics connect with this vision of consensus and empowerment?

Baylis: Responsible ethics means thinking carefully about the potential impact of ethical arguments. It's not just an academic exercise. Words matter. Responsible bioethics, a term developed by Dan Brock and others, emphasizes the need for philosophers to understand that they cannot have an impact on the world unless they engage with policymakers and help them implement ethical ideas. You have to think not just about the correct answer, but about strategies for implementation.

Impact ethics, a term introduced and explained in the blog Impact Ethics, ³ and further explored in the book Bioethics in Action (Dreger and Baylis, 2018), looks at how ethics can positively impact the world, recognizing that what counts as positive is contested. Impact ethics encompasses responsible ethics and responsible bioethics. Many stories in Impact Ethics are about challenging the status quo and challenging power. They are about naming problems and trying to change things. They are about not accepting the status quo as the norm, but about turning a reflective gaze on established practices and saying, ‘This is wrong.’

In my own work, for example, I have argued that there is a moral obligation to do research involving pregnant women. The starting assumption for many is that it is wrong to include pregnant women in research. I engage with that literature and explain why others are misguided. I argue the most ethical thing you can do is to include pregnant women in clinical trials and thereby contribute to the body of knowledge relevant for the safe and effective treatment of pregnant women. That is not the norm, but I think it is right. These ideas are fully explored in the co-edited collection Clinical Research Involving Pregnant Women (Baylis and Ballantyne, 2016).

Q: How does this translate into changing governance structures and success metrics in science?

Baylis: If you wanted to create a genome-edited baby today, you could evade laws, guidelines and declarations. You could go into international waters, get a rich person to build you a fancy boat, and do whatever you want. The only things that would stop you are other forms of governance such as peer respect, professional norms, social condemnation. If you care about being celebrated by your peers or your country, you will not violate current social and ethical norms. We need to change what counts as success. Governance is about structures and incentives, not just laws.

The current global scientific system rewards being first; it is like the Olympics, a competition (between nations and individuals) by softer means than war. That competition shapes behavior. As an alternative, I suggest exploring the merits of ‘collaborative ambition’: can we set success metrics that incentivize people to share their work and come up with creative answers that help more people? Redefining success would mean valuing collaboration, openness and societal benefit over individual achievement.

The university system, for example, is a governance system with clear metrics for success, in this case: being awarded a PhD; graduating Summa Cum Laude; publishing in high-impact journals; successfully competing for external funding; earning prestigious awards; becoming a full-professor; and so on. Those metrics drive behavior. Few academics challenge these metrics because they either feel threatened or have not achieved them. We need to question those metrics and create new ones that align with the values of meaningful impact and influence. The current metrics are thought to be placeholders for this, but they are not always aligned.

The fork in the road and slow science

Baylis: I often speak about the fork in the road when I give public lectures to emphasize the need to stop and reflect when there is more than one option in front of us. At a fork in the road, you should stop and ask yourself: ‘If I go this way, what kind of world am I helping to create? If I go that way, what kind of world am I helping to create?’ For some, the answer comes easily, ‘It's obvious; progress is forward.’ So, people rush ahead.

The ‘fork in the road’ metaphor is one of the ways in which I try to anchor the commitment to slow science. ‘Slow science’ is about quality, not speed. It is about taking the time to formulate and ask the right question(s)—the question(s) that need(s) to be asked and answered. If you get a good question at the outset, then you have a better chance of getting a good answer. Speed isn’t the metric; quality is.

To build a better world, we need to change social norms. Social norms influence expectations of success. In many scientific communities, success means being first, publishing in a prestigious journal or winning prizes. If we want a different world, we need to change the prevailing definitions of success. We need to value collaboration, inclusivity and benefit to society. We need to ask: ‘what kind of world do we want to live in?’ Then, we need to align our scientific and social practices with that. If the incentive system says, ‘Be first at all costs’, we will get risky behavior. If the incentive system says, ‘Collaborate and share’, we will get different behavior.

Advice for young Chinese bioethicists

Q: Do you have any suggestions for young scholars in Chinese bioethics?

Baylis: I think Chinese scholars have a rich tradition of thinking about how the world can and should be organized. It would be a contribution to share that traditional knowledge more widely. There is a wealth of information and concepts in your culture, in your history, that are unique and worth sharing.

As we left the campus to go to the train station, I saw something that looked like a petrified piece of wood or a rock. I wondered what it was. Lucy said it was Gongshi—a ‘scholar's rock’ or ‘viewing stone’. She told me about the four features of the scholar's stone and explained how this was a tool for meditation and reflection. That made me think: ‘Could we apply the features of the viewing stone to contemporary bioethics?’ One feature is ‘perforation’—holes. Holes in the stone might allow us to see through dense, complicated material. How might this perspective be useful in contemporary bioethics? For a Chinese scholar, this might be an interesting lens through which to assess ethical challenges. So, I would encourage scholars in Chinese bioethics to draw on your rich history and cultural resources. Invent your own frameworks. Don’t just consume Western ideas such as principlism. Share your discrete ideas and insights with the world. It would be phenomenally interesting. Look around at the wealth of information, concepts and ways of understanding the world and bring that to the table for discussion. Be creative, and always remember that ethics is for all of us.

Conclusion

Françoise Baylis's reflections leave us with a simple but urgent reminder: science and technology are never just about what can be done, but about what should be done. Tools available to us—whether CRISPR, artificial intelligence or drones—are neutral; it is our choices, our values and our governance that will shape their legacy. She insists that broad societal consensus is not a luxury, but a moral responsibility—one built through respectful dialogue, including with those with whom we profoundly disagree.

Baylis calls for a reimagining of success in science: away from the race to be first, and towards collaborative ambition—a system that rewards openness, solidarity and real societal benefit. She urges scientists and policymakers to share power, to listen to voices at the margins, and to have the courage to question the very metrics that define their careers.

Her challenge to all of us is disarmingly direct: What kind of world do you want to live in? The answer, she argues, cannot be left to chance or to a few powerful actors—it must be built together, across borders, disciplines and differences. Even if consensus is never fully reached, the effort at building consensus can change us: make us more open, more compassionate and, perhaps, more human. In the end, Baylis does not promise easy answers. What she offers instead is a compass—one that points not to the quickest path, but to the one worth walking, together.

The interview closes with a call to action: change social norms, redefine success, share power and be creative. Baylis encourages young scholars, especially in China, to draw on their own traditions and contribute new frameworks to the global conversation. Ethics, she reminds us, is for all of us, and the future of human genome editing depends on our ability to imagine and create a world that is inclusive, compassionate and just.