At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be.
I would say that in the area of reproductive science, you need to be exceptionally cautious about what's permitted as you are permanently modifying the germline, and society has very strong opinions about that. At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease (except in a limited number of Mendelian diseases) while also baking that harm into a person's genome so that if they do survive, their children may also inherit that.
(I worked towards germline modification for several decades and concluded, well before He Jianku shat the bed, that we're not ready to do it, and there do need to be some guardrails preventing rogue scientists finding naive parents and getting them to sign inadequate consent forms).
I would say that in the area of reproductive science, you need to be exceptionally cautious about what's permitted as you are permanently modifying the germline, and society has very strong opinions about that. At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease (except in a limited number of Mendelian diseases) while also baking that harm into a person's genome so that if they do survive, their children may also inherit that.
(I worked towards germline modification for several decades and concluded, well before He Jianku shat the bed, that we're not ready to do it, and there do need to be some guardrails preventing rogue scientists finding naive parents and getting them to sign inadequate consent forms).