Gene Editing

Guest: Charis Thompson, PhD, Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley  Scientists have figured out how to edit DNA. The process is cheap and easy to harness. It’s not super-precise yet, but it’s only a matter of time before a researcher could tweak the genes of an unborn child to make sure he’s not born with a genetic disease that afflicts his parents. Even more remarkable, researchers could go into the DNA of the egg and sperm before they become an embryo and snip out the genetic disease so the resulting child and all of his offspring would be free of it.  We’re talking about genetically-engineering the building blocks of the human race.  Which is amazing. And also terrifying, when you consider how easily we humans seem to slip into eugenic thinking – what would stop us from editing out certain colors of skin or ensuring a certain IQ level?