The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in 2020 for the development of CRISPRI, a method for genome editing. CRISPR/ Cas9 was initially developed in 2012, just six years later a Chinese researcher claimed that twin girls had been born via genome editing using CRISPR/Cas9, shocking the scientific community. This situation is reminiscent of the reaction to recombinant DNA in the 1970's where the scientific community aimed to impose a voluntary moratorium on experiments involving recombinant DNA until the potential risks were clear. Just a year later the moratorium was lifted. This teaches one very important lesson: science is a uniquely human endeavor and challenges traditional ideas and values. The aim of this article is to show that there are lessons to be learned from the history of science.