Progressing faster and faster each day, CRISPR technology presents many new outcomes for future societies. One example from the reading I found to be exciting and equally terrifying was when Darnovsky claimed that CRISPR can “make irreversible changes to every cell in the bodies of future children and all their descendants would constitute extraordinarily risky human experimentation”, illustrating the incredible but risky potential of CRISPR technology (Darnovsky). While it is easy to write this quote off as terrifying, I view it as exciting as well because it shows the amazing things CRISPR can accomplish, like making changes to every cell in the human body. From a different perspective, however, I still see this as a little terrifying as well because like Darnovsky also states “far too much is unknown about issues including off-target mutations (unintentional edits to the genome) [and] persistent editing effects”, which is a big gamble to take when human lives are at stake (Darnovsky).
Asking if gene editing should be done on humans is a very large and difficult question, one that has political, societal, and especially moral aspects that “the full implications of [which]… are difficult, if not impossible to foresee” (Specter). However, I think that gene editing should be done on humans. One of the main reasons I support this is to end human suffering from genetic diseases and conditions. I do agree that these things are inherently natural in our world and removing them could be controversial, but sitting idly by and allowing people to suffer isn’t just in my opinion. I am also in favor of gene editing on humans for the simple notion of progress. One thing I believe this class teaches us is that progress is vital to society and we never benefit form stopping it.