Pandemic

Preface

On the warm summer day of August 17, 2012, the newly released issue of Science magazine contained an article about bacterial immunity with a title so esoteric that late-night talk-show hosts could have used it in their monologues to make fun of scientific gobbledygook. But the article’s publication has turned out to be an enormously important biological watershed event, despite the modest prediction offered in its concluding sentence that the mechanisms described therein “could offer considerable potential for gene targeting and genome applications.”[1]

Seldom has there been such an understatement, as the potential has already become a virtual explosion of applications. The Science article was the first to introduce the world to a biologically active chimeric molecule called CRISPR/CAS9, which had been engineered from a bacterial immune system that had evolved to counter viral invaders. This extraordinary molecule made up of three easily produced and inexpensive bacterial components can be custom-tailored to seek out and alter genes in plants or animals. All at once, even a high school student armed with readily available low-cost reagents and a little instruction could learn to modify the genetic makeup of living cells, which can pass on the changes to daughter cells. With CRISPR/CAS9, any gene whose sequence is known can be removed, replaced, turned on, or turned off, and all this can be done in the equivalent of someone’s garage. It is that easy. Heretofore, such a capability existed only in the futuristic dreams of academic molecular biologists with huge, expensive laboratories at their disposal. In other words, rather suddenly, CRISPR/CAS9 has emerged as an enormously powerful, democratized gene-editing mechanism capable of rewriting the fabric of life, including human life. There is no doubt that this capability will revolutionize medicine, agriculture, and animal husbandry.

But there is a dark side. The ease and availability of this versatile and powerful tool that puts the power of the creator in the hands of so many unregulated players beget as much peril as promise. With so many potential actors involved, the situation is even more worrisome than it was in nuclear physics following the splitting of the atom, because in that instance few people had access to the necessary raw materials and equipment to experiment on their own. With CRISPR/CAS9 the question becomes whether future experimenters, be they world-renowned biologists, well-funded entrepreneurs, or high school students, will be more moved by ethical concerns or by the opportunity to maximize their own individual advantage or by whim, with little or no concern for the consequences to the planet and to all of humanity. Pandemic is the story of such danger.