Anticipatory policy for gene editing requires assessing public opinion about this new technology. Although previous surveys have examined respondents’ views on the moral acceptability of various hypothetical uses of CRISPR, they have not considered whether these scenarios are perceived as plausible. Research in construal level theory indicates that participants make different moral judgments about scenarios seen as likely or near and those seen as unlikely or distant. Therefore, we surveyed a representative sample of 400 Americans and Canadians about both the likelihood and the permissibility of 23 commonly discussed uses of gene editing. Respondents with more knowledge of gene editing generally thought these applications would be more likely within the next 20 years. There was a strong positive relationship between the perceived likelihood and permissibility of most CRISPR applications. Our results suggest that ongoing public engagement efforts for gene editing could be improved by taking its perceived time-frames into account.

基因编辑的预期政策要求评估有关这项新技术的公众意见。尽管先前的调查已经检查了受访者对CRISPR各种假设用途在道德上可接受性的观点，但他们并未考虑这些情况是否被认为是合理的。建构主义水平理论的研究表明，参与者对被视为可能或接近以及被视为不可能或远离的场景做出了不同的道德判断。因此，我们对400名美国人和加拿大人的代表性样本进行了调查，探讨了23种常见的基因编辑用途的可能性和可允许性。拥有更多基因编辑知识的受访者普遍认为，在未来20年内，这些应用将更有可能。大多数CRISPR应用的可感知性和可容许性之间存在很强的正相关关系。我们的结果表明，考虑到基因编辑的时间框架，可以改善正在进行的公众参与基因编辑的工作。