There’s been a lot of controversy after news broke that Chinese researcher He Jiankui allegedly used CRISPR to genetically engineer twin girls. That said, fears of a science-fiction world filled with “designer babies” aren’t likely to become reality, medical ethicist Jonathan Moreno argues.

CRISPR is science’s most efficient methodology to modify chromosomes to express different properties through the genes that carry information. But using it on humans is illegal in the United States and in many other places. It also elicits fears, rational or otherwise, of gene editing run amok.

Here, Moreno, a professor of ethics in the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about CRISPR and where he predicts the future of the technology is headed.

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