Our next group of correspondents stood out due to their vocations: In one way or another, their chosen careers brought them into the subculture of scientific thinking. These readers tended to be more favorably disposed to gene editing than others.
Take this reader, a “semi-retired school psychologist and a lover of science” whose daughter plans to become a clinical geneticist:
I agree with the premise of your article [that prophylactic gene editing could soon be mandatory] and am not frightened by it at all. Scientific advances have not, cannot, and should not be stopped. Since the first civilizations science has been dragging religion and society reluctantly along into a more technologically advanced future. What we gain from this seems always to be more than what we have lost.
A medical student who hopes one day to do gene editing was likewise eager for a future where it is used to cure disease––and even to direct the way that humans evolve:
Modern medicine, in its current form, is basically the answer to the question: “What is the best way to treat diseases whose cures cannot and will not ever be found?” Treating someone with cystic fibrosis, for instance, is an admirable thing to do, but it’s also an exercise in futility: That patient will undoubtedly die prematurely. Anything besides excising the mutant gene and replacing it with a normal copy is treading water and delaying the inevitable (though, obviously, the patients must still be treated).
In modern societies, infectious diseases and trauma are more or less under control (relative to developing countries and bygone eras). Curing genetic diseases (cancer loosely being included in this category) are currently a dead end. So, logically, addressing this head-on is the only next step.
I view gene therapy and editing as the way of the future, not only of medicine but also of humanity in general. It will start as the means for cures of currently incurable diseases. Eventually, it will be a means by which we can continue to evolve ourselves as a species. If 3.5 billion years of evolution churned our species out through the natural selection of random mutations, how much better can we do with logic and molecular precision? In my opinion, anything that can widely (and, potentially, permanently) change mankind and society for the better should be done.
I wish I shared the correspondent’s confidence that logic and molecular precision will serve humanity better in this realm than the decentralized systems of dating and mating have done so far. Reflecting on the decisions that literally every bygone generation might have made if able to edit genes, I fear that our choices will prove as imprudent in hindsight––and that’s not even accounting for unintended consequences.
from Technology | The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2qLaoRF
