CRISPR's Reckoning: Five Cases Expose the Chasm Between Scientific Promise and Genetic Catastrophe

The genome-editing revolution promised precision. It delivered mutation, malignancy, and death.

The documented failures of CRISPR-Cas9 technology reveal a pattern as consistent as it is damning: from the gene-edited twins carrying novel mutations that may never confer intended protection, to chromosomes vanishing entirely from human embryos during editing attempts, to leukaemia emerging years after “corrected” genes were inserted. Five cases, spanning two decades and two continents, establish that CRISPR and related gene therapies do not fail occasionally. They fail systematically, often in ways that were neither predicted by researchers nor disclosed to patients and families.

These are not peripheral incidents or worst-case scenarios. Each represents either a watershed moment that forced regulatory recalibration or a cautionary precedent that was ignored until repetition forced acknowledgement. Together, they constitute an indictment of a field that moved faster than safety protocols could constrain it.