In the Media: Crossing the Germline
“In Marcy Kelly’s story, ‘Double Spiral,’ genetic technology, in the hands of companies and hackers, goes wrong,” begins Josephine Johnston, The Hastings Center’s director of research, in an essay in Slate about a short story in the magazine that depicts a world rooted in today’s debates over gene editing. “It starts out, worryingly, with a private company holding gigantic amounts of genetic and health data on 60 percent of the U.S. population, with the ability to infer it for the rest of the country. Then, biohackers weaponize gene-editing technologies, causing the death of a senator, while a new genetic mutation known as ‘K5’ accidentally enters the gene pool.” Though we may not be headed toward this dystopian future, Johnston warns that “we are adopting a worldview that sees humans, including future generations, as mutable in much the same ways that Kelly depicts.” In this worldview, moral and ethical considerations, such as purposefully altering human evolution, are subordinated to amassing data about people. As in the story, these priorities could have perilous consequences. Read the essay.
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