The only time I ever saw a wolf in the wild, a small one, I was so frightened that I closed my eyes. It was a useful insight into the depths of my own cowardice.
Every day, with each new story about the exciting breakthroughs we’re making in genetic engineering, I feel that same shameful urge to shut my eyes.
Far faster than anybody thought, we’re working out the genes responsible for all manner of traits in all creatures great and small. Far more easily than anyone expected, we’ve moved from standard gene therapies to figuring out how to actually edit our own DNA, to ferret around inside living cells, snipping out duff genes and replacing them.
Until recently it was mostly mice at (or under) the cutting edge of this new technology. But late last year, just as everyone in the West was agreeing that human trials were a mistake, China piped up and announced that it had injected ‘edited’ genes into a cancer sufferer. Then America joined in. The University of Pennsylvania said that it was waiting for the final say-so on a trial which will edit the T-cells of cancer patients (funded, oddly, by Facebook’s Sean Parker). The race is on. The science press have begun to talk about a new moonshot, another great international competition, this time between the US and China.
Edited humans! It’s all happening at a dizzy-ing pace. But it’s this pace which requires us to stay alert. All of us, even those who recoil at the thought of genetic tinkering. The more I read, the more I think that we kooks and God-botherers, luddites and nonagenarians have got to start paying attention, because gene-editing will in the end affect all of us, and it’s going to take our collective and varied wits to figure out what to do.
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