The year 2020 became a cultural cliché, given the sense that reality’s wheels were coming off, but it might be more accurate to say that people (particularly elites) are refusing to accept traditional safeguards that were simply passed down culturally and accepted intrinsically.  (Think media objectivity, colorblindness, the existence of truth, and so on.)

Leslie Eastman points to one of the more frightening areas that this cultural indiscretion could lead, on Legal Insurrection:

A team consisting of Chinese and American scientists has developed embryos from a mixture of human and monkey cells for the first time in history.

The myths and other stories that our civilization has produced over the ages suggest a bit of common-sense wisdom that applies, here.  These experiments always have a patina of good intentions, but financial and power-based incentives mixed with a human drive to tinker will always push the boundaries into the territory of unintended consequences that can swamp the benefits.

This is why a society’s moral framework is so important.  For centuries, a foundation of Christianity has helped the West strike a balance of experimentation and hesitance to cross un-crossable lines, and I don’t see anything suitable replacing it as our elites push Judeo-Christian morality aside.