The most exhilarating and frightening passages I read from the three articles was a sentence that caught my eye in the Specter article. It reads, “For the first time, scientists can quickly and precisely alter, delete, and rearrange the DNA of nearly any living organism, including us” (pg. 1). This stood out to me as I guess I hadn’t realized that this kind of technology was already being put to use. Not only is it being used, but its being used on humans. Maybe not to the extent that media might portray it, but used on humans nonetheless. This is exciting, as this kind of technology can be used to “erase certain mutations responsible for muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, and one form of hepatitis” (pg. 1). The frightening aspect of this tech is designer babies. While it would be an astonishingly big market for parents to be able to hand pick the best qualities for their kids, it toes the line of “playing god”. Some say its unethical and wrong for people to decide these things, but personally if people really wanted to create their dream baby, I say let them, not saying that I would do it, I think its nice to be surprised by how your child is going to turn out.
On that note I would dare to say that gene editing on humans should be researched more in depth and more widely accepted. If it means prevention of life altering disabilities and longer lifespans in humans, then in my opinion it’s a no brainer. Sure, its not a complete science yet and were far from perfecting it, but this breakthrough field of science has a lot to offer. There could be so many undiscovered uses for this technology, and use on humans shouldn’t sway peoples views of it.
I like your view on CRISPR technology, it can definitely could be used to help humans have less disease and we could live longer. But, have you thought about the people who could abuse the power of gene editing? And if you have, do you think that people could somehow get over the power-hunger and see your point of view?