How Gene Editing Could Ruin Human Evolution

Aggregated News

http://time.com/4626571/crispr-gene-modification-evolution/

Silhouette of a baby. The baby's back is turned away from the camera, facing a window with sunlight. A rubber duck and several other toys are placed on the baby's side.

CRISPR snips away risky genes—but even the bad have good in them

In the 1960s, Thomas Kuhn suggested that scientific ideas undergo fits of revolution, challenging the foundation of establishment science. But it was Peter Galison who emphasized the impact of a tool or method, and encouraged the notion that technology creates the tangible breach or disruption of a field. Alfred Hersey, in a similar spirit, once told a colleague, “ideas come and go, but a method lasts.”

CRISPR-Cas9, the new gene modification tool, which has been heralded as a means for inserting ourselves into evolution, is itself evolving as a technology, even as you read this. That technology itself can evolve means there is greater urgency for how we think of our biology: either as a machine (which can break down and get new spare parts) or as part of ecology (whereby breakdown is not necessarily bad and can be part of growth, renewal or reorganization). CRISPR may be used to repair a gene that has a deficient product, such as an enzyme or receptor...

Human Genetic Modification

Genomics

U.S. Federal

A "Post-Human" Future?

Can You Really See Everything? Hype and Fraud in Silicon Valley

By Emma McDonald Kennedy | 10.29.2026

Biopolitical Times

At the beginning of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s blockbuster documentary You Can See Everything, Billy Evans (partner of Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes), says that they decided to do the film for one purpose: “radical transparency.” As they work on “Theranos 2.0,” Evans and Holmes want to show the public that she has been misunderstood –– painted as a liar and a fraud in the public imagination (and the courts) despite, as she claims in the...

Human Genetic Modification

Would you pay to have the ‘best baby’? Liberal eugenics and the troubling quest for human perfection

By Jan Grue, The Guardian | 10.27.2026

Aggregated News

For a very long time, I dreamed of being cured. I was born in 1981. I learned to walk early enough, but I stumbled and fell more easily than other children. My parents began to worry that something was wrong...

Human Genetic Modification

A New Hope for Gene Editing

By Gary Sernovitz, Bloomberg | 10.21.2026

Aggregated News

Three years ago, at the age of 50, I found out I have dangerous genes. So in June, I went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to see how they could be fixed. Among my 6 billion base pairs of DNA are two...

U.S. Federal

Start-Up Claims to Use A.I.-Created Viruses to Treat a Patient

By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 10.20.2026

Aggregated News

For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient.

Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly...

Human Genetic Modification

How Gene Editing Could Ruin Human Evolution

Perspectives

CRISPR snips away risky genes—but even the bad have good in them

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