Last month, the journal Nature published a call for a global moratorium on heritable human genome editing. Despite criticism, notably from CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, the moratorium is just what's needed now.

In response to news of the world’s first babies born in China from gene-edited embryos, Sam Sternberg, a CRISPR/Cas9 researcher at Columbia University, spoke for many when he said “I’ve...