CRISPR-Cas 9 Essay

As medical technology and research advances, society’s once limited knowledge of the causes of diseases and disorders is growing. Along with this new information comes new methods of curing and at times, completely eliminating these diseases from the body. A new form of this is CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing. According to the Your Genome article, “What is CRISPR-Cas9?,” CRISPR-Cas 9 is a “technology that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit parts of the genome by removing, adding, or altering sections of the DNA sequence” (“What is CRISPR-Cas 9?” para. 2). In other words, the enzyme, Cas-9, is able to go into a person’s DNA and change parts of it, completely changing a person, in either terms of physical attributes or diseases in

The Time article, “How Gene Editing Could Ruin Human Evolution,” by Jim Kozubeck, acknowledges the construct in science that many doctors hold that men’s genes in life can be “broken.” Yet, this idea goes completely against Darwin’s idea of evolution, in which he “showed us that evolution does not progress toward an ideal model or a more perfect form, but instead is a work of tinkering toward adaptation in local niches” (Kozubeck para. 8). Kozebuck further emphasizes this point with the concept that “genetic variants that predispose us to risk or supposed weaknesses are precisely the same ones that turn out to have small fitness advantages (they make us better at numbers, more sensitive, alter concentration.” (Kozebuck para. 9). In other words, genes that cause disease can also come with attributes in a person that are seen as desirable. Therefore, eliminating these disease causing genes will also eliminate certain positive attributes, which can as a result, alter the evolution of humans negatively. The most prevalent drawback of CRISPR/Cas9 comes as the decline of