About Us, Without Us: Inclusion in the Threat of Eradication
        
            By Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, 
                Impact Ethics
             | 12. 08. 2015
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
             
  Untitled Document 
  
The development of CRISPR, a  cut-and-paste gene editing technology, has pushed discussions of germline gene  “therapy” from speculation about how this might affect us sometime in the  future to urgency, leading to the International Summit on Human Gene Editing held this week  in Washington DC.
 
  Germline modification of the  human genome goes a step beyond what most people think of as genetic therapy,  which alters the genome of one individual, to altering the genetic material of  that individual and all of that individual’s descendants. If you happen to  belong to a community, as I do, that has at its core a group of people with a  cluster of genetic variants that contribute to the very nature and existence of  said community, this could mean the eradication of a particular population and  social community.
 
  I’m speaking of signing Deaf  communities, which have developed visual-tactile languages in response to the  embodiment of deafness. Signed languages have persisted (despite numerous  attempts to extinguish them) in large part because of native use by  multi-generational deaf families who have passed this knowledge on...
 
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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