Since, the newest iPhone 14 has been released and has been all over the internet for the past few days about how it has features like 4k recording and so on. This intrigued me to think how has humanity developed to this point. Earliest parts of human civilization started with the discovery of the wheel and now we evolved in numerous ways producing technology that was once perceived to be mere science fiction. When we think about our ancestors they would have definitely not thought about having to control the world in the palm of your hands. Recently, one of these new revolutionising technologies is genetic engineering more specially CRISPR CAS-9.
Humanity has been persistently growing and ramifying in this planet, however, getting affected by diseases severes a constraint to this growth leading to many humans not being able to achieve their full potential. Diseases can be of various sorts but more specifically genetically transmissible diseases are highly impairing. For instance, cystic fibrosis is a monogenic disease that affects cells producing mucus, sweat and gastric juices. This disease may cause malnutrition, chronic lung disease and so on and has no cure at the current moment. Another major example is: cancer, a disease caused by mutations to genetic material within the cell, the kinds are highly diversified each having its own impact on a particular system functioning. CRISPR CAS-9 can change that. You might ask, what is this term? Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and CAS-9 is the type of protein used. CRISPR works by editing the specific sequence of DNA that contains the disease and can be replaced with a normal gene. This allows the individual to have a normal life like anyone else. This is a very simplified way of explaining this miraculous gene editing tool.
As everything has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, the potential for this gene editing tool is infinite. Some important disadvantages would be using this tool to produce individuals with specific needs in a certain way. For instance, parents might want their child to be at a certain height or make changes to suit what the parents think the child should do. This will create an enormous havoc as every individual might be patterned to do something without their consent or choice. People with more power can use it to produce more human labour force, this all might sound like some science fiction dystopian novel, however the future is not far away. We are already being influenced by the media in numerous ways causing us to change our own views and opinions. This causes us to get succumbed to things that may not be ethically correct, always a higher power can influence people. In conclusion, we humans advance to great heights in each step with growth also comes destruction, a prime example would be industrial revolution which then lead to World War.
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