'Serious' science: a response to Kleiderman, Ravitsky and Knoppers.

In their paper 'The "serious" factor in germline modification', Kleiderman, Ravitsky and Knoppers rightly highlight the ambiguity in the oft-utilised term 'serious' in legal discussions of human germline genome modification.1 They suggest interpretation of this term may benefit from a framework based on human rights rather than solely objectivist or constructivist frameworks. In this response, I show the authors provide a narrow and hasty dismissal of objectivist frameworks by defining objectivism broadly as 'based on biological facts' early on but later criticising genetic treatment lists, a single narrow implementation of only some of the facts.