Is it possible to overstate the potential of a new technology that efficiently and cheaply permits deliberate, specific, and multiple genomic modifications to almost anything biological? What if that technology was also capable of altering untold future generations of nearly any given species—including the one responsible for creating it? And what if it could be used, for better or worse, to rapidly exterminate an entire species?
Certain experts have no intention of veiling their enthusiasm—or their unease. Consider, for example, biologist David Baltimore, who recently chaired an international summit dedicated primarily to the technology’s much-disputed ethical implications. “The unthinkable has become conceivable,” he warned his audience in early December. Powerful new gene-editing techniques, he added, have placed us “on the cusp of a new era in human history.”
If so, it might seem somewhat anticlimactic to note that Science magazine dubbed this technology its “Breakthrough of the Year” for 2015, or that its primary developers are widely considered shoo-ins for a Nobel Prize— in addition, that is, to the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences already earned by two such researchers. All of which might sound trifling compared to the billions up for grabs following imminent resolution of a now-vicious patent dispute.