Claudia Dreifus: I’m told you’ve had bad dreams about the downside of your genome-editing discovery.
Jennifer Doudna: There’s one in particular that haunts me. I had been thinking a lot about the profound tool it is, about all of the wonderful things that it enables—cures for genetic diseases and conditions, an increased food supply. But it also brings the potential for eugenics, for state-sponsored alteration of human beings. You even can imagine creating new species of humans.
Jennifer Doudna: There’s one in particular that haunts me. I had been thinking a lot about the profound tool it is, about all of the wonderful things that it enables—cures for genetic diseases and conditions, an increased food supply. But it also brings the potential for eugenics, for state-sponsored alteration of human beings. You even can imagine creating new species of humans.
Source : ‘The Joy of the Discovery’: An Interview with Jennifer Doudna
