Bill Maher

And these babies were born.

Now, here's why it's controversial.

First of all, he didn't get any approval from the International Ethics Committee.

There is no international ethics committee.

There was no international ethics committee on this at that time.

And there is rumor that this HIV receptor may actually not just confer some susceptibility or resistance to HIV, but that it also might be involved in brain circuits involved in memory.

So the story became that he used CRISPR to generate these super babies or something like that.

The Chinese government claims that he was punished.

We don't know if he was punished by being put in jail or given a laboratory.

We don't know.

It's all very mysterious and cloaked.

But when this happened, the international community paused, and it was very unclear.

I was watching this very closely.

It was very unclear for a few moments whether or not he would be given a Nobel Prize or whether or not he would be thrown into a cell.

The world didn't know how to deal with this because he was way ahead of the curve.

I guarantee that there are countries now where people are using CRISPR on embryos.

I'm certain it is...

you know, has serious ethical concerns.

It is not allowed in the United States, but it's coming.

In fact, you can deep sequence embryos now from an IVF and you can isolate the embryos that you think have the fewest disease genes or that you think have the most genes that would confer whatever traits that you... Don't you think we're always late on getting to some of these things?