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The Gene Hackers - A powerful new technology enables us to manipulate our DNA more easily than ever before
10 pages, Unknown Binding
First published November 16, 2015
1 person is currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Michael Specter
12 books42 followersMichael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. His most recent book, “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives,” was published on October 29, 2009. Specter writes often about science, technology, and public health. Since joining the magazine, he has written several articles about the global AIDS epidemic, as well as about avian influenza, malaria, and the world’s diminishing freshwater resources, synthetic biology and the debate over the meaning of our carbon footprint. He has also published many Profiles, of subjects including Lance Armstrong, the ethicist Peter Singer, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Manolo Blahnik, and Miuccia Prada.
Specter came to The New Yorker from the New York Times, where he had been a roving foreign correspondent based in Rome. From 1995 to 1998, Specter served as the Times Moscow bureau chief. He came to the Times from the Washington Post, where, from 1985 to 1991, he covered local news, before becoming the Post’s national science reporter and, later, the newspaper’s New York bureau chief. In 1996 he won the Overseas Press Club’s Citation for Excellence for his reporting from Chechnya. He has twice received the Global Health Council’s annual Excellence in Media Award, first for his 2001 article about AIDS, “India’s Plague,” and secondly for his 2004 article “The Devastation,” about the ethics of testing H.I.V. vaccines in Africa. He also received the 2002 AAAS Science Journalism Award, for his article, “Rethinking the Brain,” about the scientific basis of how we learn.
He lives in New York.
Specter came to The New Yorker from the New York Times, where he had been a roving foreign correspondent based in Rome. From 1995 to 1998, Specter served as the Times Moscow bureau chief. He came to the Times from the Washington Post, where, from 1985 to 1991, he covered local news, before becoming the Post’s national science reporter and, later, the newspaper’s New York bureau chief. In 1996 he won the Overseas Press Club’s Citation for Excellence for his reporting from Chechnya. He has twice received the Global Health Council’s annual Excellence in Media Award, first for his 2001 article about AIDS, “India’s Plague,” and secondly for his 2004 article “The Devastation,” about the ethics of testing H.I.V. vaccines in Africa. He also received the 2002 AAAS Science Journalism Award, for his article, “Rethinking the Brain,” about the scientific basis of how we learn.
He lives in New York.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 20, 2015
Hey! Read this or stop pretending you are worried about genetic modifications.
p. 52. With CRISPR, scientists can change, delete, and replace genes in any animal, including us.
This is different from what we normally think of as genetic modification. Rather than inserting DNA from a different species, we simply edit our existing "code" in whatever way the editor chooses. Does this lessen the concern?
p. 52. Working mostly with mice, researchers have already deployed the tool to correct the genetic errors responsible for sickle-cell anemia, muscular dystrophy, and the fundamental defect associated with cystic fibrosis. One group has replace a mutation that causes cataracts; another has destroyed receptors that H.I.V uses to infiltrated our immune system.
I am such a complete sissy about my eyes, I am already dreading cataract surgery: how will we resist pursuing this?
p. 54. Agricultural researchers hope that such an approach to enhancing crops will prove far less controversial than using genetically modified organisms, a process that requires technicians to introduce foreign DNA into the genes of many of the foods we eat.
What say you? Is having a scientist simply edit the existing code, as she sees fit, less problematic than the insertion of code from another species?
p. 59. In laboratories, agricultural companies have already begun to use CRISPR to edit soybeans, rice, and potatoes in an effort to make them more nutritious and more resistant to drought. Scientists might even be able to edit allergens our of foods like peanuts.
You are not against this are you?
p. 59. A mutation engineered into a mosquito that would block the parasite responsible for malaria, for instance, could be driven through a large population of mosquitoes within a year or two.
Malarial is one of the top three "Third World killers." Of course, you are in favor of this?
p. 60. If those disease genes, and genes that cause conditions like cystic fibrosis, could be modified successfully in a fertilized egg, that alteration could not only protect a single individual but eventually eliminate the malady form that person's hereditary lineage. Given enough time, the changes world affect all of humanity.
p. 61. For example, sickle cells, which cause anemia, evolved as a protection against malaria; the shape of the cell blocks the spread of parasite. If CRISPR technology had been available two hundred thousand years ago, it might have seemed sensible to edit sickle cells into the entire human populations. But the results would have been devastating.
Oops!!!
p. 61. If CRISPR helps unravel the mysteries of autism, contributes to a cure for a form of cancer, or makes it easier for farmers to grow more nutritious food while reducing environmental damage, the fears, like the many others before them, will almost certainly disappear.
Of course! It is "almost certain" that the Luddites will never be right.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
p. 52. With CRISPR, scientists can change, delete, and replace genes in any animal, including us.
This is different from what we normally think of as genetic modification. Rather than inserting DNA from a different species, we simply edit our existing "code" in whatever way the editor chooses. Does this lessen the concern?
p. 52. Working mostly with mice, researchers have already deployed the tool to correct the genetic errors responsible for sickle-cell anemia, muscular dystrophy, and the fundamental defect associated with cystic fibrosis. One group has replace a mutation that causes cataracts; another has destroyed receptors that H.I.V uses to infiltrated our immune system.
I am such a complete sissy about my eyes, I am already dreading cataract surgery: how will we resist pursuing this?
p. 54. Agricultural researchers hope that such an approach to enhancing crops will prove far less controversial than using genetically modified organisms, a process that requires technicians to introduce foreign DNA into the genes of many of the foods we eat.
What say you? Is having a scientist simply edit the existing code, as she sees fit, less problematic than the insertion of code from another species?
p. 59. In laboratories, agricultural companies have already begun to use CRISPR to edit soybeans, rice, and potatoes in an effort to make them more nutritious and more resistant to drought. Scientists might even be able to edit allergens our of foods like peanuts.
You are not against this are you?
p. 59. A mutation engineered into a mosquito that would block the parasite responsible for malaria, for instance, could be driven through a large population of mosquitoes within a year or two.
Malarial is one of the top three "Third World killers." Of course, you are in favor of this?
p. 60. If those disease genes, and genes that cause conditions like cystic fibrosis, could be modified successfully in a fertilized egg, that alteration could not only protect a single individual but eventually eliminate the malady form that person's hereditary lineage. Given enough time, the changes world affect all of humanity.
p. 61. For example, sickle cells, which cause anemia, evolved as a protection against malaria; the shape of the cell blocks the spread of parasite. If CRISPR technology had been available two hundred thousand years ago, it might have seemed sensible to edit sickle cells into the entire human populations. But the results would have been devastating.
Oops!!!
p. 61. If CRISPR helps unravel the mysteries of autism, contributes to a cure for a form of cancer, or makes it easier for farmers to grow more nutritious food while reducing environmental damage, the fears, like the many others before them, will almost certainly disappear.
Of course! It is "almost certain" that the Luddites will never be right.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
Displaying 1 of 1 review