In Michael Specters article on the gene revolution he mentions the possibility to eliminate malaria by rendering the mosquito that transmits it infertile. This could save many lives but is also a terrifying power for us to have. I read more about how this would work and the most effective method being proposed is creating males with gene drive that only produce male offspring. This method would quickly eliminate that species of mosquitoes if any large amount were released. I don’t agree with eliminating any species completely even if they are harmful to us, there has to be other ways to get rid of malaria. And while this would be very useful for eliminating malaria it could also be used to eliminate any species humans deemed as pests which is scary.

I think gene editing should be done on humans embryos, but only to get rid of genetic diseases and major defects. The thing that scares me with gene editing is that it seems like would be hard to know if the change only effects what we want and not having any other effect even when passed on to another child. Although the changes that led to creating humans from the first cell were all random mutations, they were small changes that accumulated rather than a relatively large change in one generation like gene editing. Unfortunately I could definitely see gene editing becoming something people would pay a lot of money for, like Lee Silvers wrote, “this really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your child-to-be.”(Darnovsky, pg 2)