The Door is Open

One example I saw that was quite exciting was the fact that you could engineer a mosquito whose offspring would be sterile (Specter p. 2). It is exciting, because it could be a new way to deal with an especially deleterious pest, but it is also somewhat frightening, as it shows us just how much power such a technology really has. While exterminating mosquitoes themselves is not necessarily a bad thing, the fact that we can now genetically configure an organism to self destruct its own species is a little worrying.

I believe that gene editing should be, and will be done on humans in our lifetimes. There are obviously drawbacks and concerns, but at this point I do not believe that door can be closed. The technology can and has saved lives that were previously unsavable, and will likely do so many times in the future as well. The concerns I have are more related to nonessential modifications, such as making people stronger, or smarter. It is one thing to use a technology to correct mistakes, but another to use it to enhance the human body. I personally would like to avoid such a situation. As we have learned in class before, technologies and sciences are not free of politics, and as such, these technologies will not be applied to everyone everywhere, and there will be those that do not have access. If the world begins to create better human beings in this way, it will likely create a substantial deal of inequality. That being said, delaying the medical implementations of this is not a proper response to this concern, and I still believe that we should save as many lives as we can with the technology available to us.