How evolution evolved: the risks and rewards of gene-editing technology

INDIA BLOCKspeaks to paediatrician and TV writer Dr Neal Baer about the controversial advancement

- Dr Neal Baer

Most creation myths come with a curse attached. Adam and Eve had to labour for eating that knowledge-giving apple. Prometheus notoriously got a bad time for stealing life-giving fire. And throughout history, technological advancements have proven a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences.

It’s one such advancement that’s causing Dr Neal Baer to lose sleep. “I’m very worried about CRISPR,” the American paediatrician tells me over Zoom from Paris. “CRISPR keeps me up all night.” It sounds like a way to keep your salad fresh, and its full title — clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats — is even less enlightening. Put simply, it’s a gene-editing tool that allows scientists to cut and paste DNA gene sequences, snipping out unwanted genes and replacing them with something else. Peoples stem cells can be harvested, edited in a lab and re-transplanted.

As a Harvard-educated doctor and a television writer and producer, Dr Baer is uniquely placed to communicate the thorny bio-ethical issues of this exciting — and terrifying — technology. It is the focus of a new essay collection, The Promise and Peril of CRISPR, which he has edited.