I think we sometimes have a problem on this site where people post articles and the headlines imply a different meaning than the article. For example, someone reading this headline might think "Oh, he rejects injecting himself with CRISPR" and not read so much into the 'publicly' aspect of it. But reading the article indicates pretty clearly that the guy is actually just really worried (understandably) about people doing it as a stunt or for marketing purposes.

As far as I can tell, the guy's only regret here is that he did it in such a way that made a massive hullabaloo over the whole thing, not that he did it in the first place.