STAT+: Setting aside the thorniest issues around CRISPR babies, scientists say embryo-editing research should proceed
LONDON — The Francis Crick Institute is a glimmering chameleon of a building, spanning four acres of downtown London, that took 10 years and cost nearly $850 million to build. The curves of its vaulted twin roofs manage to resemble the hull of an alien spacecraft while still echoing the steel and glass forms found at the bustling St. Pancras train station across the street. If trains were the vehicles that carried people into the 19th century’s industrial revolution, buildings like the Crick, as it’s known, seem designed to lift us off into the biological revolution of the 21st. “Discovery without boundaries,” is its motto.
Out front, a Conrad Shawcross sculpture rises out of the sidewalk in English weather-worn steel. The stack of twisting, growing tetrahedra — a nod to nonlinear scientific advancement — looms, 42 feet high, like a sphinx. Its questions emerge out of the brickwork behind it; Would you eradicate disease? Would you enhance your body? Where would you draw the line?
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