Genetic Editing Quotes

The power to control our species’ genetic future is awesome and terrifying. Deciding how to handle it may be the biggest challenge we have ever faced.

we have entered a third and even more momentous era, a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code.

our cognitive abilities as adults are heavily influenced by the social environment that we experienced during childhood, making it hard to discern any influence of preexisting genetic differences.

Two revolutions coincided in the 1950s. Mathematicians, including Claude Shannon and Alan Turing, showed that all information could be encoded by binary digits, known as bits. This led to a digital revolution powered by circuits with on-off switches that processed information. Simultaneously, Watson and Crick discovered how instructions for building every cell in every form of life were encoded by the four-letter sequences of DNA. Thus was born an information age based on digital coding (0100110111001…) and genetic coding (ACTGGTAGATTACA…). The flow of history is accelerated when two rivers converge.

After more than three billion years of evolution of life on this planet, one species (us) had developed the talent and temerity to grab control of its own genetic future. There

human genetic diversity is highest in Africa; perhaps more-diverse humans would collectively produce more-diverse inventions.

This overall flow of genetic information—from DNA to RNA to protein—is known as the central dogma of molecular biology, and it is the language used to communicate and express life.

Sufficiently generous and liberal to be open to all students of high caliber, even some who haven’t benefited from genetic editing.

have no doubt, this technology will — someday, somewhere — be used to change the genome of our own species in ways that are heritable, forever altering the genetic composition of human kind.

Plant domestication may be defined as growing a plant and thereby, consciously or unconsciously, causing it to change genetically from its wild ancestor in ways making it more useful to human consumers.

In this long history of accelerating development, one can single out two especially significant jumps. The first, occurring between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, probably was made possible by genetic changes in our bodies: namely, by evolution of the modern anatomy permitting modern speech or modern brain function, or both. That jump led to bone tools, single-purpose stone tools, and compound tools. The second jump resulted from our adoption of a sedentary lifestyle, which happened at different times in different parts of the world, as early as 13,000 years ago in some areas and not even today in others.

We now have the power to control our genetic future, which is awesome and terrifying.

The Ethics of Genetic Control. “As we learn to direct mutations medically, we should do so. Not to control when we can is immoral.

Scientists have precisely identified well over four thousand different kinds of DNA mutations that can cause genetic disease.

Asilomar’s lack of focus on ethical issues bothered many religious leaders. That prompted a letter to President Jimmy Carter signed by the heads of three major religious organizations: the National Council of Churches, the Synagogue Council of America, and the U.S. Catholic Conference. “We are rapidly moving into a new era of fundamental danger triggered by the rapid growth of genetic engineering,” they wrote. “Who shall determine how human good is best served when new life forms are being engineered?”13 These decisions should not be left to scientists, the trio argued. “There will always be those who believe it appropriate to ‘correct’ our mental and social structures by genetic means. This becomes more dangerous when the basic tools to do so are finally at hand. Those who would play God will be tempted as never before.

Instead of injecting a weakened or partial version of the dangerous virus into humans, these new vaccines deliver a gene or piece of genetic coding that will guide human cells to produce, on their own, components of the virus.

Look. What I meant was, there's both good and bad when you raise a child. When you put the time in, and I mean really put the time in, you bond with her. Through the good times. Through the bad times. You bond. And it's the bond that makes the father, regardless of genetics.

Examples of those genetic defenses include the protections (at a price) that the sickle-cell gene, Tay-Sachs gene, and cystic fibrosis gene may confer on African blacks, Ashkenazi Jews, and northern Europeans against malaria, tuberculosis, and bacterial diarrheas, respectively.

What none of the participants discussed was a longer-range prospect: using CRISPR to engineer inheritable edits in humans that would make our children, and all of our descendants, less vulnerable to virus infections. These genetic improvements could permanently alter the human race.

Scientists were able to replicate this process—successfully replacing a viral sequence with other types of DNA and inserting that DNA in the target cell—making “genomic surgery” possible. CRISPR rapidly replaced older methods of genetic engineering, making gene editing cleaner, more accurate, and much faster.

Developers and entrepreneurs may someday be able to use CRISPR-based home testing kits as platforms on which to build a variety of biomedical apps: virus detection, disease diagnosis, cancer screening, nutritional analyses, microbiome assessments, and genetic tests. “We can get people in their homes to check if they have the flu or just a cold,” says Zhang.

Thus, the distinction between “natural” and “unnatural” has been obscured. Red grapefruits created by neutron radiation, seedless watermelons produced with the chemical compound colchicine, apple orchards in which every tree is a perfect genetic clone of its neighbors—none of these aspects of modern agriculture is natural. Yet most of us eat these foods without complaint.

RNA interference operates by deploying an enzyme known as “Dicer.” Dicer snips a long piece of RNA into short fragments. These little fragments can then embark on a search-and-destroy mission: they seek out a messenger RNA molecule that has matching letters, then they use a scissors-like enzyme to chop it up. The genetic information carried by that messenger RNA is thus silenced.

In this long history of accelerating development, one can single out two especially significant jumps. The first, occurring between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, probably was made possible by genetic changes in our bodies: namely, by evolution of the modern anatomy permitting modern speech or modern brain function, or both. That jump led to bone tools, single-purpose stone tools, and compound tools.

psychiatrists who believe the illness is largely genetic find hard to explain: at least 20 per cent of schizophrenics completely recover, most of them able to live their lives without any drug treatment at all. A telling example of a recovered schizophrenic is Rufus May. Not only did he become wholly sane but, having done so, he trained as a clinical psychologist and now treats schizophrenics in a community project

One moral issue that continues to loom large for her is inequality, especially if the wealthy are able to buy genetic enhancements for their children. “We could create a gene gap that would get wider with each new generation,” she says. “If you think we face inequalities now, imagine what it would be like if society became genetically tiered along economic lines and we transcribed our financial inequality into our genetic code.

Genetic vaccines The plague year of 2020 is likely to be remembered as the time when these traditional vaccines began to be supplanted by genetic vaccines. Instead of injecting a weakened or partial version of the dangerous virus into humans, these new vaccines deliver a gene or piece of genetic coding that will guide human cells to produce, on their own, components of the virus. The goal is for these components to stimulate the patient’s immune system.

One common response of ours to infection is to develop a fever. Again, we’re used to considering fever as a “symptom of disease,” as if it developed inevitably without serving any function. But regulation of body temperature is under our genetic control and doesn’t just happen by accident. A few microbes are more sensitive to heat than our own bodies are. By raising our body temperature, we in effect try to bake the germs to death before we get baked ourselves.

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can’t see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases—like my ALS—without also glimpsing its dangers. Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage. We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our potential and create a better world for the whole human race. We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be and to make sure we plan for how it can be. We all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting, if precarious, place to be, and we are the pioneers. When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins.

I follow you. So now you aim to get to a good college. In order to do justice to your talent.’ ‘Well, something like that. My mother and I both thought that maybe Atlas Brookings, being a generous and liberal college…’ ‘Sufficiently generous and liberal to be open to all students of high caliber, even some who haven’t benefited from genetic editing.’ ‘Exactly, sir.’ ‘And no doubt, Rick, you understand, because your mother will have told you, that I currently chair the college’s Founders’ Committee. That’s to say, the body that controls the scholarships.’ ‘Yes, sir. That’s what she told me.’ ‘Now, Rick. I’m hoping your mother hasn’t been implying that the selection procedure at Atlas Brookings is subject to any favoritism.’ ‘Neither my mother nor I would ask you to help me out of favoritism, sir. I’m only asking you to help if you think I’m worth a place at Atlas Brookings.’ ‘That’s well said. Okay, let’s take a look at what you have here.

The Pyrenean ibex, an extinct form of wild mountain goat, was brought back to life in 2009 through cloning of dna taken from skin samples. This was followed in June of 2010 by researchers at Jeju National University in Korea cloning a bull that had been dead for two years. Cloning methods are also being studied for use in bringing back Tasmanian tigers, woolly mammoths, and other extinct creatures, and in the March/April 2010 edition of the respected Archaeology magazine, a feature article by Zah Zorich (“Should We Clone Neanderthals?”) called for the resurrection via cloning of what some consider to be man’s closest extinct relative, the Neanderthals. National Geographic confirmed this possibility in its May 2009 special report, “Recipe for a Resurrection,” quoting Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient dna who served as a scientific consultant for the movie Jurassic Park, saying: “I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I’m not laughing anymore.… This is going to happen.

Our eyes will make no progress against the mystery of recovery so long as we look at the addicted person through 12-step lenses. To say that such a person is powerless – and insane, morally deficient, filled with wrongs, a menace to others, disoriented, beyond human assistance, afflicted with a progressive fatal disease, and genetically different from normal humans – is to declare that the person’s inner nature is a vile and empty wasteland. It is to deny that there is a better self inside. If that is true, recovery is inexplicable, a random act of God, an inscrutable mystery.

It is the impulse of science to try to understand nature, and the impulse of technology to try to manipulate it. Recombinant DNA had pushed genetics from the realm of science into the realm of technology. Genes were not abstractions anymore. They could be liberated from the genomes of organisms where they had been trapped for millennia, shuttled between species, amplified, purified, extended, shortened, altered, remixed, mutated, mixed, matched, cut, pasted, edited; they were infinitely malleable to human intervention. Genes were no longer just the subjects of study, but the instruments of study.

Our slowest defensive response is through natural selection, which changes our gene frequencies from generation to generation. For almost any disease, some people prove to be genetically more resistant than are others. In an epidemic those people with genes for resistance to that particular microbe are more likely to survive than are people lacking such genes. As a result, over the course of history, human populations repeatedly exposed to a particular pathogen have come to consist of a higher proportion of individuals with those genes for resistance—just because unfortunate individuals without the genes were less likely to survive to pass their genes on to babies.

decade after the first edition of this book was published, Yan Wong and I met in the fitting surroundings of the Oxford Museum of Natural History to discuss the possibility of producing a new, tenth anniversary edition. Yan, once my undergraduate pupil, had been employed as my research assistant during the writing of the original edition, before he left for his lecturing position in Leeds and his career as a television presenter. He played an enormously important part in the conception and execution of the first edition, and he was credited as joint author of several of the chapters. During the course of our discussion ten years on, we realised that much new information had come in, especially from the molecular genetics laboratories of the world. Yan undertook the bulk of the revision and I proposed to the publisher that this time he should be properly credited as joint author of the whole book.

Obviously there are quite a few factors that determine personality, including a person’s upbringing and experiences,” David continues, “but despite the peace and prosperity that had reigned in this country for nearly a century, it seemed advantageous to our ancestors to reduce the risk of these undesirable qualities showing up in our population by correcting them. In other words, by editing humanity. “That’s how the genetic manipulation experiment was born. It takes several generations for any kind of genetic manipulation to manifest, but people were selected from the general population in large numbers, according to their backgrounds or behavior, and they were given the option to give a gift to our future generations, a genetic alteration that would make their descendants just a little bit better.” I look around at the others. Peter’s mouth is puckered with disdain. Caleb is scowling. Cara’s mouth has fallen open, like she is hungry for answers and intends to eat them form the air. Christina just looks skeptical, one eyebrow raised, and Tobias is staring at his shoes.

It is the impulse of science to understand nature, and the impulse of technology to try to manipulate it. Recombinant DNA had pushed genetics from the realm of science into the realm of technology. Genes were not abstractions anymore. They could be liberated from the genomes of organisms where they had been trapped for millennia, shuttled between species, amplified, purified, extended, shortened, altered, remixed, mutated, mixed, matched, cut, pasted, edited; they were infinitely malleable to human intervention. Genes were no longer just the subjects of study, but the instruments of study. There is an illuminated moment in the development of a child when she grasps the recursiveness of language: just as thoughts can be used to generate words, she realizes, words can be used to generate thoughts. Recombinant DNA had made the language of genetics recursive. Biologists had spent decades trying to interrogate the nature of the gene-but now it was the gene that could be used to interrogate biology. We had graduated, in short, from thinking about genes, to thinking in genes.

The debate of nature versus nurture is an old one. But it is off the mark. There is no nature versus nurture. One is not possible without the other. Life is like a fire that consumes resources and changes them to something else. Genetic capacity is like a spark or flame. But the size of the final flame is not related to the initial spark; it is determined by the environment.

Rollo is considered to be the great-great-great-grandfather of William the Conqueror. Through William he is a progenitor of the modern day British Royal family, and in addition, a precursor of all present European rulers and a large number of claimants of dissolved European thrones. A genetic examination of the remaining parts of Rollo's grandson, Richard I, and great-grandson Richard II, has been done, with the aim of determining the beginnings of the renowned Viking warrior.

Inspired in part by the uncanny ability of viruses to splice new genetic information into the DNA of bacterial cells, the pioneers of this early gene therapy realized they could use viruses to deliver therapeutic genes to humans. The first reported attempts came in the late 1960s from Stanfield Rogers, an American physician who had been studying a wart-causing virus in rabbits, Shope papillomavirus. Rogers was particularly interested in one aspect of the Shope virus: It caused rabbits to overproduce arginase, an enzyme their bodies used to neutralize arginine, a harmful amino acid. The sick rabbits had much more arginase in their systems, and much less arginine, than healthy rabbits. What’s more, Rogers found that researchers who had worked with the virus also had lower-than-normal levels of arginine in their blood. Apparently these scientists had contracted the infections from the rabbits, and these infections had led to lasting changes in the researchers’ bodies as well. Rogers suspected that the Shope virus was ferrying a gene for heightened arginase production into cells. As he marveled at the virus’s ability to transfer its genetic information so effectively, he began to wonder if an engineered version could deliver other, useful genes. Many years later, Rogers would recall: “It was clear that we had uncovered a therapeutic agent in search of a disease!” Rogers didn’t have to wait long for a disease

Retroviruses, a large class of viruses that includes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), do the same thing in humans, splicing their genetic material into the genome of infected cells. This pernicious property makes retroviruses especially challenging to eradicate, so much so that they have left an outsize mark on our species. A full 8 percent of the human genome—over 250 million letters of DNA—is a remnant of ancient retroviruses that infected ancestors of our species millennia ago.

What kinds of crops are being grown? In 1999, the great majority (nearly 80 percent) of the total global transgenic acreage was planted in varieties of soy, corn, cotton, and canola that had been genetically altered by agrochemical companies to withstand massive dousings of their own commercial brands of herbicides.

Academics and physicians alike were hailing CRISPR as the holy grail of gene manipulation: a quick, easy, and accurate way to fix defects in genetic code.

only a remote possibility in the United States, since existing reproductive procedures such as IVF and PGD, which routinely cost tens of thousands of dollars, are seldom covered by health insurance. But in places like France, Israel, and Sweden, countries whose national health plans cover assisted reproduction, it’s possible that simple economics will incentivize governments to make gene editing available to patients who need it. After all, providing lifelong treatment to a single person with a genetic disease could be much more expensive than prophylactic intervention in the embryo using gene editing.

It amazes me to realize that we are on the cusp of a new era in the history of life on earth—an age in which humans exercise an unprecedented level of control over the genetic composition of the species that co-inhabit our planet. It won’t be long before CRISPR allows us to bend nature to our will in the way that humans have dreamed of since prehistory.

Because that DNA is the whole reason we exist, still preserved long after most of humanity ascended into super-intelligent human-robot hybrids. Humans are just the legacy of that pre-Singularity time—the living museums that preserve the genetic diversity of what used to be the human race. In reality, we’re just a bunch of pathetic apes that evolution passed by. All

DBT posits that borderline patients possess a genetic/biological vulnerability to emotional overreactivity. This view hypothesizes that the limbic system, the part of the brain most closely associated with emotional responses, is hyperactive in BPD. The second contributing factor, according to DBT practitioners, is an invalidating environment: that is, others dismiss, contradict, or reject the developing individual’s emotions. Confronted with such interactions, the individual is unable to trust others or her own reactions. Emotions are uncontrolled and volatile. To calm these erratic emotions, DBT emphasizes mindfulness, the process of paying attention to what is happening at the moment, without extreme emotional reactivity, judgment, or invalidation. In the initial stages of treatment, DBT focuses on a hierarchical system of targets, confronting first the most serious and then later the easier behaviors to change. The highest priority addressed immediately is the threat of suicide and self-injuring behaviors. The second-highest target is to eliminate behaviors that interfere with therapy, such as missed appointments or not completing homework assignments. The third priority is to address behaviors that interfere with a healthy quality of life, such as disruptive compulsions, promiscuity, or criminal conduct; among these, easier changes are targeted first. The fourth priority is to focus on increasing behavioral skills.

You cannot change your height, the width of your hips, the length of your feet, or any of several other anthropometric variables affecting endurance performance that I have discussed in this chapter. You can’t change your genetic potential for leanness, either. But you can reduce your body-fat percentage (and thereby adjust your weight) to the level that is optimal for performance in your chosen endurance sport given your unchangeable genetic constraints.

A person is not an originating agent; he is a locus, a point at which many genetic and environmental conditions come together in a joint effect.

As French novelist and essayist Jean Genet once wrote about prison, “it is in this place that racism reaches its cruelest pitch . . . in this place that racism becomes a kind of concentrate of racism.

That kind of aura of ambivalence is carried over into Devil May Cry for, after all, Dante in the electronic game is still half-devil, and something brooding and smoldering inside him may yet emerge in future editions of the game. Games technology being what it is, players may in future be able to choose how good or how evil Dante will be. He will never lose his evil side completely. He even has a twin brother who seems destined to convert from evil to good and back again forever. Dante survives in his world of evil because he understands it. He understands it because it is part of him. It is part of his genetic drive. But he makes decisions in his life — rather, the players of the game can decide for him — as to what drives him most, a moral vision or a base, devilish autarky. The way he goes around ruthlessly slaying hordes of his half-cousins, I’d say the equation that makes up Dante is a set of sliding numbers and hypothetical values. For Dante, evil and good are an algebra. They are not absolutes. So it is not as simple as saying ‘there is good in everybody’, but is more to do with complex investigations and calculations as to how best to intersect.

According to current research, in the determination of a person’s level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts. In other words, people have an inborn disposition that’s set within a certain range, but they can boost themselves to the top of their happiness range or push themselves down to the bottom of their happiness range by their actions.

The RAG [(Recombination-Activating Gene)] genes [which assist in the facilitation of V(D)J recombination] lack the introns that characterize eukaryotic genes. In this unusual feature they resemble the transposase gene of a transposon, a type of genetic element that can make and move copies of itself to different chromosomal locations. The essential components of a transposon are a transposase—an enzyme that cuts double-stranded DNA—and regions of repetitive DNA, called the terminal repeat sequences, that are recognized by the transposase. These two features allow the transposon to be excised from one location and inserted into another. The similarity of the RAG recombinase to a transposase has led to the hypothesis that the mechanism now used to rearrange immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor gene segments originated in a vertebrate ancestor with the insertion of a transposon into a gene encoding a receptor of innate immunity. The inserted transposase genes evolved to encode RAG proteins, and the terminal repeat sequences evolved to become the recombination signal sequences for the first rearranging gene segments. During this evolution, the transposase gene and the long terminal repeats of the transposon were separated and became components of different genes, both expressed specifically in lymphocytes. Today, the human RAG genes are on chromosome 11[,] and on four other chromosomes are the much-expanded sets of rearranging antigen-receptor genes.

For example, virus-resistant genes could be inserted in the genome of a species that is dying from an infection, or genetic susceptibility to a disease could be altered with precision gene editing,

A breakthrough in 2012 led by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier meant that for the first time genes could be edited almost like text or computer code, far more easily than in the early days of genetic engineering.

[US futurist and trans-humanism advocate Zoltan Istvan] argues libertarian cience advocates are needed in today's political environment, warning that technology-centric risk-takers are required as a reaction against the rise of ultra-conservative religious ideologies that threaten to stifle not just advances in AI, driverless cars, stem cell research, drones and genetic editing, but also immigration, women's rights and the environment. (p.112-3)

[US futurist and trans-humanism advocate Zoltan Istvan] argues libertarian science advocates are needed in today's political environment, warning that technology-centric risk-takers are required as a reaction against the rise of ultra-conservative religious ideologies that threaten to stifle not just advances in AI, driverless cars, stem cell research, drones and genetic editing, but also immigration, women's rights and the environment.

A few centuries ago, the government of this country became interested in enforcing certain desirable behaviors in its citizens. There had been studies that indicated that violent tendencies could be partially traced to a person’s genes—a gene called ‘the murder gene’ was the first of these, but there were quite a few more, genetic predispositions toward cowardice, dishonesty, low intelligence—all the qualities, in other words, that ultimately contribute to a broken society.” We were taught that the factions were formed to solve a problem, the problem of our flawed natures. Apparently the people David is describing, whoever they were, believed in that problem too. I know so little about genetics—just what I can see passed down from parent to child, in my face and in friends’ faces. I can’t imagine isolating a gene for murder, or cowardice, or dishonesty. Those things seem too nebulous to have a concrete location in a person’s body. But I’m not a scientist. “Obviously there are quite a few factors that determine personality, including a person’s upbringing and experiences,” David continues, “but despite the peace and prosperity that had reigned in this country for nearly a century, it seemed advantageous to our ancestors to reduce the risk of these undesirable qualities showing up in our population by correcting them. In other words, by editing humanity. “That’s how the genetic manipulation experiment was born. It takes several generations for any kind of genetic manipulation to manifest, but people were selected from the general population in large numbers, according to their backgrounds or behavior, and they were given the option to give a gift to our future generations, a genetic alteration that would make their descendants just a little bit better.” I look around at the others. Peter’s mouth is puckered with disdain. Caleb is scowling. Cara’s mouth has fallen open, like she is hungry for answers and intends to eat them from the air. Christina just looks skeptical, one eyebrow raised, and Tobias is staring at his shoes. I feel like I am not hearing anything new—just the same philosophy that spawned the factions, driving people to manipulate their genes instead of separating into virtue-based groups. I understand it. On some level I even agree with it. But I don’t know how it relates to us, here, now.

Inbreeding is more prevalent on islands, and genetic diversity accordingly lower, as descent from a small founding population and isolation from the wider world reduces the likelihood of hooking up with someone who isn't a relative. Iceland, for example, is full of tall, blond, sexy people because most Icelanders are descended from a small group of migratory tall, blond, sexy people. There has been little further immigration to Iceland over the centuries because most people don't want to freeze on an isolated volcanic rock while being made to feel short, swarthy and unattractive.

Most high-risk systems have some special characteristics, beyond their toxic or explosive or genetic dangers, that make accidents in them inevitable, even “normal.” This has to do with the way failures can interact and the way the system is tied together.

spelling, usage, and pronunciation. We have also undertaken or commissioned work in adding new vocabulary in specialist subject areas such as genetics, health, medicine, and business, and in varieties of English from around the world.    The second edition also includes a new

The first edition of this book addressed the seemingly invincible fallacy that statistical disparities in socioeconomic outcomes imply either biased treatment of the less fortunate or genetic deficiencies in the less fortunate. This edition takes on other widespread fallacies, including a non sequitur underlying the prevailing social vision of our time—namely, that if individual economic benefits are not due solely to individual merit, there is justification for having politicians redistribute those benefits.

The first edition of this book addressed the seemingly invincible fallacy that statistical disparities in socioeconomic outcomes imply either biased treatment of the less fortunate or genetic deficiencies in the less fortunate.

In 2016, over 100 Nobel laureates – about one third of all living Nobel medal holders – wrote an open letter to Greenpeace criticising their position on genetically modified organisms and on Golden Rice in particular.

The rationale was quite simple. If the gene editing resulted in a genetic change that does or could occur in nature, then there’s no need for the regulators to get involved.

April 2015, China announced its use of a new technology known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspersed Palindromic Repeats), used for the purpose of simplified gene editing. This new genetic modification technology is fast, simple to use, and inexpensive. A recent Chinese biotech start-up named Amino has brought this technology to everyone in a kit that retails for just under seven hundred dollars. Yes, for less than a good smartphone,

As long as the genetic code for a particular trait is known, scientists can use CRISPR to insert, edit, or delete the associated gene in virtually any living plant’s or animal’s genome.

The fact that genetic code exists in triplets, with three letters of DNA specifying each amino acid of a protein,

Like a strand of DNA, the mRNA is a chain of letters, and its sequence matches the sequence of the DNA it copied (the only major exception being that T gets replaced by U). The mRNA is exported out of the cell’s nucleus and delivered to a protein-synthesizing factory called a ribosome, which translates the four-letter language of RNA (A, G, C, and U) into the twenty-letter language of proteins (the twenty amino acids). This translation proceeds according to the genetic code, a cipher in which every three-letter RNA combination, called a codon, instructs the ribosome to add one specific amino acid.

ecumenism, universal brotherhood, and the like. But the very fact of believing implies rejection of different beliefs.

Natural selection, this all-powerful driving force of biological evolution, has privileged in our genes traits that were immediately favorable to the survival and proliferation of our ancestors, under the conditions that prevailed there and then, with no regard for later consequences. This is intrinsic to the process of natural selection, which sees only the immediate present and does not foresee the future.

The negative counterpart of those “good” traits has been defensiveness, distrust, competitiveness, and hostility toward the members of other groups, the seeds of the conflicts and wars that landmark the entire history of humanity up to our day.

We enjoy the unique faculty of being able to act against natural selection. The problem is that, in order to do this, we must actively oppose some of our key genetic traits, surmount our own nature.

When there is contradiction between what science knows and what religion believes, there can be no compromise; religion must yield.

The militant atheism proselytized by authors such as Richard Dawkins, has, in spite of the success of their books, caused hardly a dent in the armor of even the most open-minded believers, who cannot help being shocked by the virulence with which their most sacred beliefs are attacked.

deeply deplored by many Greens—that one of the first advocates of ecology, James Lovelock, the father of the “Gaia” model, has recently admitted, albeit reluctantly, that the energy requirements of the world will not be met without nuclear power.

(Belgium, a pioneer in the development of nuclear power, on which it depends for more than 50 percent of its electricity), the decision has been made to abandon nuclear power, even though no adequate alternatives

In the last analysis, it all boils down to a population problem. Most of the ills covered in chapter 12 flow, directly or indirectly, from the fact that there are too many of us now on Earth,

Part of the opposition to GMO technology is political and ideological, fuelled by hostility against the perceived ills of capitalism and globalization.

in the United States, where public schools are run by local lay authorities, Churches still exert important influence, by way of school boards and other supervising bodies. Their involvement is weaker in Europe, where religious neutrality of the public school system is strictly enforced and respected;

Even in the United States, where public schools are run by local lay authorities, Churches still exert important influence, by way of school boards and other supervising bodies. Their involvement is weaker in Europe, where religious neutrality of the public school system is strictly enforced and respected;

As to the last question, the present situation allows no prediction. One can simply say that there seems to be no objective reason for assuming that hominization has reached an unsurpassable summit.

In their expansion, humans have invaded every part of our planet, from below sea level to the highest mountaintops, from tropical forests to frozen steppes and ice fields, from lush savannahs and prairies to the driest deserts, from the Earth’s surface to the depths of oceans, the air above us, and even the Moon and distant space. Unlike other living species, they have not achieved their successes by developing appropriate physical adaptations; they have done it with their intelligence.

the exponential pace of human expansion may be about to flatten into a logistic curve, with the limit being set by the finite dimension and resources of planet Earth. This enforced flattening, if it occurs naturally, is bound to be achieved at the cost of enormous human suffering through famine, deprivation, disease, environmental assaults, and internal strife.

Nature is neither good nor bad; it is neutral. Natural selection is blind; it has as much solicitude for the AIDS virus as for penicillin-producing molds, for the scorpion as for the poet.

Thanks to the growing use of contraceptives, population expansion is slowing down, though not as much as it should.

Animal research is indispensable to the study of human disease, whether it’s used to confirm the genetic causes of certain disorders, to evaluate potential drugs, or to test the efficacy of medical interventions like surgery or cell therapy.

Intelligent design is simply not a scientific theory. Science is based on the working hypothesis that things are naturally explainable. This may or may not be true. But the only way to find out is to make every possible effort to explain things naturally. Only if one fails—assuming failure can ever be definitely established—would one be entitled to state that what one is studying is not naturally explainable.

Here is where Darwin’s ideas encountered the strongest resistance, lasting up to the present day; they implied a lack of purpose in nature.

of all that has been learned is clear and indisputable: all known living organisms are descendants from a single common ancestral form.

Evolution is not a theory, contrary to what is often stated, sometimes even by scientists. Evolution is a fact. It was a theory two centuries ago, when Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin first proposed it, just as heliocentrism was a theory in the days of Copernicus and Galileo. Evolution is no longer a theory, just as heliocentrism is no longer a theory; it is a fact.

As long as the origin of life can’t be explained in natural terms, the hypothesis of an instant divine creation of life cannot objectively be ruled out.

In 2015, 92 percent of all corn, 94 percent of all cotton, and 94 percent of all soybeans grown in the United States were genetically engineered in this way. The altered crops offer considerable environmental and economic advantages. By planting crops that have enhanced abilities to protect themselves against pests, farmers can attain higher yields while reducing their reliance on harsh chemical pesticides and herbicides.

To view ethnicity as a form of greatly extended kinship is to recognize, as ethnic groups do, the role of putative descent. There are fictive elements here, but the idea, if not always the fact, of common ancestry makes it possible for ethnic groups to think in terms of family resemblances—traits held in common, on a supposedly genetic basis, or cultural features acquired inn early childhood—and to bring into play for a much wider circle those concepts of mutual obligation and antipathy to outsiders that are applicable to family relations.

at the International Summit on Human Gene Editing (HGE),the experimental use of children at the embryonic level to possibly cure specific genetic disorders was advocated. The safeguards and restrictions

Genetic engineering in bacteria is easy. Their genomes are small, and it’s very simple to persuade bacteria to absorb new genes. You can generate genetically engineered bacteria in just a few days.

In 2001 scientists finally had access to the entire genome sequence of humans, our complete 3 billion letters of genetic information.

Let’s imagine DNA as a giant zip, where each tooth is one of the four letters of the genetic code.

Essentially, this means that the Food and Drug Administration wants control over animals that have simply inherited genetic changes through perfectly natural breeding.

For about 60 years type 1 diabetics were treated with insulin extracted from the pancreas of pigs. This wasn’t ideal as the insulin was a relatively minor component of all the proteins in the pig pancreas and required a lot of expensive purification to produce a relatively small amount of the drug. The pig insulin wasn’t quite identical to the normal human version and it wasn’t suitable for some patients. It was also very difficult to ramp up supply quickly when demand increased. In the 1980s, the drug firm Eli Lilly produced and sold human insulin that had been created in genetically modified bacteria. Now, virtually all insulin is made in bacteria or yeast.