Several years ago, scientists discovered a technique known as CRISPR/Cas9, which allowed them to edit DNA more efficiently than ever before.

Since then, CRISPR science has exploded; it’s become one of the most exciting and fast-moving areas of research, transforming everything from medicine to agriculture and energy. In 2017 alone, more than 14,000 CRISPR studies were published.

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But there are still major ethical hurdles to grapple with when it comes to gene editing. Many researchers think it would be unsafe to allow a CRISPR-modified embryo to grow into an actual human — at least without much, much more research. “The stakes are enormous,” wrote Stanford’s Hank Greely, who specializes in the ethical and social implications of new biomedical technologies:

You’d have to be criminally reckless, or insane, to try to make a baby this way unless and until we’ve had a decade or more of preliminary research, with human tissues and with non-human animals (including certainly primates and maybe even some of the non-human apes), showing that it is safe. If the moral risk isn’t enough of a deterrent, the potential legal liability should be.