How, if at all, do we as a society want to use this capability? This is the question that has motivated this meeting.” Now we must face the questions that arise. “Today, we sense that we are close to being able to alter human heredity. “We could be on the cusp of a new era in human history,” said David Baltimore (California Institute of Technology), chair of the summit organizing committee, in his opening remarks. The summit brought together more than 500 people from around the world for three days of presentations and deliberations on the scientific, ethical, legal, social, and governance issues associated with human gene editing, while an additional 3,000 people watched the summit online. National Academy of Medicine, the Royal Society, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences hosted a three-day international summit on December 1-3, 2015, in Washington, DC. To explore the many questions surrounding the use of gene editing tools in humans, the U.S. They also have raised profound questions about how people may choose to alter not only their own DNA but the genomes of future generations. These new tools have generated great excitement in the scientific and medical communities because of their potential to advance biological understanding, alter the genomes of microbes, plants, and animals, and treat human diseases. New biochemical tools have made it possible to change the DNA sequences of living organisms with unprecedented ease and precision.