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The Perspectives assembled in this special issue of The CRISPR Journal were commissioned by the Global Observatory for Genome Editing in advance of the organization’s international summit in May 2025 in Cambridge, Mass.* Established in 2020, the Global Observatory has convened multi-year conversations across countries and international organizations, reaching beyond the boundaries of academic disciplines, and traversing sectors of society. The transformative power of CRISPR has occupied a central place in these discussions, alongside other technologies that also animate the social, economic, and moral imaginations of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, medical professionals, ethicists, patients, and citizens. However, rather than proceeding to ethical questions by first asking what CRISPR technology can and cannot do, the Global Observatory has re-centered questions about the meaning of human (and non-human) life, asking how these meanings are likely to be altered through genome editing technology and why we might care. Biotechnology today is poised to change aspects of human nature that were until recently taken as foundational. These are changes that concern all humanity. Yet dominant practices of deliberation and governance lean in the direction of narrowing and simplifying problems, thereby excluding perspectives that seem peripheral or not conducive to pragmatic problem-solving. By contrast, the Global Observatory acknowledges the need to include a wider diversity of human concerns by expanding the range of questions arising at the frontiers of biotechnology. Its strategy is to foster meaningful exchanges between unlikely conversation partners, encouraging and facilitating dialogue among communities that are not normally in a position to reflect upon each other’s perspectives. The essays in this special issue model this approach. The authors begin from different professional starting points—from engineering and medicine to bioethics, theology, global health, and social activism—and arrive at different conclusions. For example, some maintain steadfast opposition to human heritable genome editing, while others focus on the ethical imperative of expanding access to genome editing. Yet across this diversity of views, resonances recur around broadening the opportunities for deliberation and devising more effective approaches to bridging science and society.