SAVING HUMANITY
SARAH WILD: High hopes for gene editing but all such activity must evolve
Gene editing promises to save humanity, fix disease and make us stronger and smarter but success is still not clear-cut
Beware of scientists bearing salvation. Whenever anyone tells you that some new technology will save or condemn humanity, it should set your spidey-sense tingling — because they’re almost always talking nonsense. Similar hubris can be found when you’re renovating your house or doing an ambitious DIY task that is beyond your skill set, and someone tells you: "It’s very simple, you just…." As soon as they say that, you know to treat them with suspicion. It’s the same in the world of science, a field fraught with provisos and caveats and built on the premise that we don’t know everything. Nonetheless, people have been promising me for years that gene editing will save humanity, fix disease and make us stronger and smarter. This all hinges on a technology called Crispr-Cas9, a gene editing technique that is derived from how bacteria protect themselves against viruses. In this immune response, bacteria are able to copy parts of the virus’s DNA, then implant these rogue copies into the vi...
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