We did not have this tool for a decade, it was still very much scientific work in progress, with a lot of practical problems to be solved. Those problems were only ironed out in 2017-2018.

You can absolutely kill or at least maim a new medical technology if you push it on the market too far and a wave of serious side effects hits you. As an example: death of Jesse Gelsinger [0] delayed genetic therapies by several years, possibly a decade or more. Scientists were afraid to touch the tools that killed a young man and produced a public backlash.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger