RFK Jr., investor in CRISPR biotech, voiced concerns about the technology

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s disclosure on Wednesday that he invested in a gene-editing biotech belies a years-long track record of voicing concerns about a technology he would be in position to regulate if confirmed to lead the federal health department.

On multiple occasions, Kennedy has commented on the potential of CRISPR, a potent and powerful gene-editing tool, to disrupt DNA in unintended and unsafe ways. The nonprofit that RFK Jr. founded and led for years, Children’s Health Defense, has repeatedly raised those same concerns. That track record raises the question of how he would regulate gene-editing research and drug development as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, a role that would give him power over the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, among other agencies.

Experts in the field noted that Kennedy’s past comments reflect longstanding concerns about the safety of gene editing that researchers themselves have flagged, but which haven’t been borne out by data from drugs that are moving through clinical trials and beginning to reach patients as approved therapies.