Evans’ dissertation (and later his first book) were a sociological explanation for the debate about what would now be called human gene editing from the 1950s through the 1990s. Since that time he has been a student of this debate – not taking ethical positions per se, but examining why certain positions come to be dominant. In 2015-2016 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee to investigate the ethics of human gene editing. His recent book on this topic argues for a totally different approach to the bioethical debate about human gene editing based not on abstract positions but on socially defensible limits. He was awarded the Tata Chancellor’s Chair of Social Sciences from UC, San Diego because of his research in the social science and ethics of genetics.
