Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a leading physician, scientist, and expert in gene editing, explains how a series of scientific breakthroughs led to the medical scandal of the decade.

In November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui of Shenzhen, China, announced via YouTube that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies. It soon became clear that this was not a historic scientific achievement, but rather a historic ethical fiasco, a deeply flawed experiment on unborn human beings. What made it possible for a rogue scientist with no medical training to covertly and recklessly alter the genes of babies? What does the future hold now that the first members of the CRISPR generation have been born?