{"id":7138,"date":"2015-12-23T17:08:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T00:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7138"},"modified":"2016-01-09T17:13:01","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T00:13:01","slug":"crispr-is-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2015\/12\/23\/crispr-is-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"CRISPR Is Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Can CRISPR Avoid the Monsanto Problem?<\/h1>\n

BY\u00a0MICHAEL SPECTER<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Because<\/a>Because it makes manipulating genes so much easier,\u00a0CRISPR<\/small>\u00a0offers researchers the ability to rapidly accelerate studies of many types of illness, including cancers, autism, and\u00a0AIDS<\/small>.\u00a0<\/span>CREDIT<\/span>PHOTOGRAPH BY MAX WHITTAKER\/THE WASHINGTON POST\/GETTY<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

It is distressing, but a fact, that the more rapidly any technology is adopted by scientists the more likely it is to leave people confused, anxious, and suspicious. This week, I wrote an article for the magazine about just such a\u00a0revolutionary technique, called\u00a0CRISPR<\/small><\/a>, that permits scientists to edit the DNA of plants and animals with an ease and a precision that even a decade ago seemed inconceivable.<\/p>\n

CRISPR<\/b>\u00a0research has already begun to transform molecular biology. There have been bold new claims about its promise and powers nearly every day. Yet, for the past fifty years, at least since Watson and Crick demonstrated that DNA contained the blueprints required to build everything alive, modern science has been caught in a hype trap. After all, if we possess such exquisitely detailed instructions, shouldn\u2019t they be able to help us fix the broken genes that cause so many of our diseases?<\/p>\n

The assumption has long been that the answer is yes. And for decades, we have been told (by the medical establishment, by pharmaceutical companies, and, sadly, by the press) that our knowledge of genetics will soon help us solve nearly every malady, whether it affects humans, other animals, or plants.<\/p>\n

It turns out, however, that genetics and magic are two different things. Deciphering the blueprints in the three billion pairs of chemical letters which make up the human genome has been even more complex than anyone had imagined. And even though the advances have been real, and often dramatic, it doesn\u2019t always seem that way. This has led many people to discount, and even fear, our most promising technologies. Somehow, we take lessons more readily from movies like \u201cJurassic Park\u201d and \u201cGattaca\u201d than from the very real, though largely incremental, advances in medical treatments.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker Can CRISPR Avoid the Monsanto Problem? BY\u00a0MICHAEL SPECTER Because it makes manipulating genes so much easier,\u00a0CRISPR\u00a0offers researchers the ability to rapidly accelerate studies of many types of illness, including cancers, autism, and\u00a0AIDS.\u00a0CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY MAX WHITTAKER\/THE WASHINGTON POST\/GETTY It is distressing, but a fact, that the more rapidly any technology is adopted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}