Speaker: Kim Carlisle Kit-Wah Chung
Discussant: Susan Greenhalgh (Harvard University, Department of Anthropology)

Human germline genome editing (GGE) has made substantial advancements due to technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9. Discussions on GGE have focused on ethical aspects as well as the governance of GGE, and less on the political norms and values in which these technologies have emerged. Notably, the political background in China – where GGE was pioneered – has not been systematically discussed yet. This PhD project aims to investigate GGE experiments which have been published between 2015–19 from the perspective of biopolitics. It follows research on biopolitics and assisted reproductive technologies in China, and compares the aims of GGE in scientific discourse in China, the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK). The data mainly includes scientific publications, e.g. reports on GGE by the national academies in China, the UK and US, government white papers, or the Five-Year-Plans. The project argues that in China, GGE experiments are part of the national goal to “improve the population quality” (提高人口素质) through preventing inheritable birth defects. To some extent, this is in line with international scientific discourse supporting clinical uses of GGE to “correct genetic diseases.”