All language subtitles for NOVA.S47E09.Human.Nature.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP.2.0.H.264-GNOME_track3_[eng]

Mother Nature gave us something

that's richer than
our imagination.

We saw a very peculiar pattern.

Never seen anything
like this before.

I remember him saying,

"Remember this word: CRISPR."

We've never had
the ability to change

the fundamental chemical nature

of who we are, and now we do.

And what do we do with that?

David's doctor told
me, "Just hold on.

There's something coming."

To change DNA.

You can actually do it.

We could engineer a
single gene that could

potentially make us
all more muscular.

But should we make
that universally available?

Should we really be
manipulating the heredity

of future generations given

our lack of knowledge
about so many things?

I don't know where
you draw the line

between not having albinism

and deciding your kid
needs to be an extra foot taller

so they can be a good oarsman

and go to Yale...
where is that line?

Who's gonna draw that?

Anything that will stop
my child from suffering

I'm for.

But don't draw it in
front of my disease.

What does this
mean for this science,

where we have the
capacity to edit in

some things that we
think are important?

Are we playing God?

You don't realize
it's disruptive

until you look backward.

Often you don't realize

that you're in the
middle of a revolution

until after the
revolution has occurred.

Major funding for NOVA
is provided by the following:

Dr. Bonner, fellow
prophets, and...

Ladies and gentlemen...

This summer, I traveled through

northern Arizona
and southern Utah.

In this land, the rivers
have carved great gorges,

and on the sheer
cliffs of these gorges,

one can read a billion years
of the history of the Earth.

On that immense scale,

a foot represents the passage
of perhaps 100,000 years;

all of man's recorded
history took place

as an inch was deposited;

all of organized
science, a millimeter;

all we know of genetics,
a few tens of microns.

The dramatic advances
of the past few decades

have led to the discovery of DNA

and to the decipherment

of the universal
hereditary code,

the age-old language
of the living cell.

And with this understanding

will come the
control of processes

that have known only
the mindless discipline

of natural selection
for two billion years.

And now the impact of
science will strike straight home,

for the biological
world includes us.

We will surely come to the time

when man will have
the power to alter,

specifically and
consciously, his very genes.

This will be a new
event in the universe.

The prospect is, to me,

awesome in its
potential for deliverance

or equally for disaster.

There we go, much better.

You want to squeeze my hand?

Relax your shoulders.

Relax your toes.

Being in the hospital
isn't scary to me.

Having a certain new problem
isn't scary to me anymore,

'cause it's happened
so many times.

I don't know, my blood just
does not like me very much,

I guess.

Your red cells are
supposed to be round

and have oxygen in them.

Mine are half-moon-shaped,
sickle-shaped,

which is why it's
called sickle cell,

so I don't get the
same amount of oxygen.

I always say, like, oil change.

You know, you
drain the dirty out

and then put a clean in.

Yeah, so he just needs a tune-up

every four to six weeks,
yeah, uh-huh, yeah... okay?

Okay. Put this on.

Take deep breath and hold.

Mm.

Okay.

You okay, David? Mm-hmm.

He used to tell me,
"Don't cry, Nonna.

Why are you crying?"

I said, you know...
"Love you, baby."

He goes, "Don't worry about it."

He says, "If I lose
my life," he goes,

"You'll see me again."

And I thought, "This
child has more strength

and faith than I do."

It's often called the
first molecular disease.

It's caused by a single
change in the DNA sequence.

It's the letter A
changed to a letter T.

- That's it?
- That's it.

And that mutation
causes a kink in the protein

that prevents it
from folding properly.

If your folding structure
of a protein is disrupted,

now that protein can't function.

It causes the red blood
cell to really collapse.

It becomes very stiff and
it can't squeeze through,

and you're not able
to get red blood cells

to the tissues where
they can deliver oxygen,

and if you block the ability of
oxygen to get to those tissues,

those tissues won't work
well and they'll get damaged.

In Africa, the life expectancy

for somebody with
sickle cell disease

is on the order of five
to eight years of age.

In the U.S., it's the
early to mid-40s.

What do you say to a kid
that their life is gonna be...

We avoid it... we avoid that...

It's not a, it's... Really?

It's not a conversation
we're good at having.

Makes me very nervous.

David can go from
crazy teenager,

joking, jumping around,

to a fetal position
on his knees.

It's like... pulsing.

"This hurts!"

"You're having a
sickle cell crisis!"

Look, I can have,
like, a little pain crisis

where it really doesn't count,

and then I can have
something really bad,

but I'm not just gonna
not play basketball.

You can't just not
play basketball.

This is David's
old red blood cells.

We're gonna save for research.

How do you sing it?

♪ Rain, rain, go
away, come again... ♪

It's a genetic disorder,

so in order to cure
a genetic disorder,

you literally have to
go in and fix the gene.

We just didn't have the tools

to make that single-letter
change in a precise fashion.

Even one letter?

Especially one letter.

Deoxyribonucleic
acid, or DNA for short,

is the material
that's the basis of life.

Each living thing
has its unique DNA

that determines what
that living thing will be:

plant or animal, man or muskrat.

If we understood

the structure of genes,

the structure of chromosomes,
and how genes work,

then we might better
be able to understand

and treat genetic diseases
which occur in humans.

The work that Paul Berg did,

that was probably the beginning.

This dream of gene therapy

was born out of those
1970s experiments,

and we were still
very far away from it,

but you'll see people talking
about that hope right away.

The hope is that the
isolation of the gene

will lead to treatment of people

with muscular dystrophy.

Scientists are working
on genetic cures

for diseases such as
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

A, T, A, G, C...

The idea behind gene
therapy is really simple:

add in a copy of
the gene that works.

Then they'll make
the protein that works,

and then they won't
be sick anymore.

But the devil, as is often
the case, is in the details.

Right now, we have the ability

to identify the
gene, to isolate it,

but the ability to put
it where we want it

is still a long ways away.

If you put a gene into a cell,

you cannot tell
exactly where that gene

is going to enter the
cell's chromosome.

Conventional gene therapy

is an essentially
random process.

So imagine taking this
century-long narrative,

which is human DNA,

which is a very, very long text,

and taking one paragraph

and just sticking it
somewhere random.

The change you are creating
is not a controlled one.

There was a clinical trial
that was done in France.

This was for really sick
children... I want to be clear.

This was for children who
would have died otherwise.

Four of these children
developed cancer.

One of them died.

The gene went
into the wrong place.

Because it's a random
process, and, by chance,

it went into the wrong place,

and that random
event caused cancer.

You know, you always think that

what you know is
gonna get a little better

and a little better
and a little better,

and soon be there, and
what we knew how to do

wasn't getting a
whole lot better.

It was getting
a little bit better.

The technology
was just too clumsy

to actually use it
with human beings.

It became very,
very clear to us that

we are at the foot of
a very tall mountain

and we may not even have
the right mountaineering gear.

I worked at this company
called Sangamo Biosciences.

We decided to figure out a way

to change human genes
in a precise fashion.

You know, this would be like
word processors for your DNA.

This will get technical,
but good technical.

DNA breaks all the time.

You go get a dental X-ray.

The technician points
this thing at your face...

And the X-rays
actually hit your DNA,

and they physically
create a break,

so the familiar
double helix of DNA

physically goes.

The good news is,

the cell has its own
machine to fixing breaks.

Inside our cells,

there are two identical
DNA molecules

lying side by side,
literally side by side.

If one is broken, it
can say to its sister...

and that, in fact, is the
technical term, the sister...

"Hey, sis, I'm sorry.
I've had a break.

I'm wondering if I can copy
the missing genetic information."

And the sister goes, "Yeah."

Done.

"Chromosome broken

"awaits sounds
of strands pairing,

preserving life's thread."

There's really,
there is really a haiku

about homology-directed repair.

Why is that useful?

So it's useful because

if you can cut a
gene inside a cell,

so if you can create a break

at a place of interest,

then you can change that gene.

You fool the cell,

give it a separate piece of
DNA that you have made,

a piece of DNA
which is identical

to the chromosome
that you are cutting

except for the change
that you wish to make.

And Mother Nature will
not know she's being fooled.

She will repair the break

using this piece of DNA
you provided as a template,

and so whatever
change you brought in

will then go into
the chromosome.

You can think of it

like a cursor in Microsoft Word.

In Word, if you have a
document where you edit,

first you have to
place the cursor there.

In DNA, wherever you make a cut

is the equivalent of a cursor

in this word processor
of the genome.

That's where you can
type in a new word.

So if you wanted

to use that capability to
"engineer the genome,"

the challenge was to
introduce breaks in the DNA

at places where you
wanted to, to alter the code.

How were we gonna do that?

We need something
that cuts only one gene

out of the, you know,
25,000 that we have.

There were just such
serious blocks in the way.

So it looked like it was
gonna be a long road.

And that's what changed.

And that came sort of overnight.

David's doctor told me,

"Just hold on... there's
something coming."

When I first heard about it,

I was at a conference
in New York,

and it was a very strange
conference of, of futurists.

It was put on by a Russian guy

whose ambition is
to download his brain

and become an
android who lives forever.

In this future, people
will be young, beautiful.

They will have multiple
bodies, not only just one.

But they had a lot
of good people there,

including an important
geneticist from Harvard,

George Church.

And I remember him
saying, "Remember this word:

CRISPR," C-R-I-S-P-R.

It's, like, you know, in
"The Graduate," plastics.

Remember the word CRISPR.

This is going to allow
human genome engineering

on a unprecedented scale.

How old is CRISPR?

Oh, in terms of
millions of years?

Yeah. Oh, I mean...

Probably... billions.

When you are a student,

you think everything is known.

But there are places
where no one else looked.

The organism I was working with

is called Haloferax
mediterranei.

This microorganism
is very peculiar.

They only live in environments

where the salinity is about
tenfold that of the seawater.

These tiny organisms are...

I would say, even,
so clever, yeah?

Clever because of
the evolution, of course.

Well, I'll tell you
the story that I know.

Microbial genome sequencing
started sometime in the 1990s.

What does that
mean? See, okay, so,

unraveling the DNA
code of organisms of life

is a relatively
recent part of biology,

and in the late 1990s, people
started to turn their attention

to the sequencing
of microbial genomes.

They're amazingly
highly evolved entities

that just chose a different
way of surviving in the world

than the cells that became us.

We saw a very peculiar pattern.

These very short
fragments of DNA.

They repeated many times.

And they were
regularly interspaced.

Eventually, we realized
these peculiar sequences,

they were present in many
different microorganisms.

But they didn't have
really any name.

CRISPR came to my mind

just thinking about
the, the main features.

Clustered regularly interspaced

short palindromic repeats.

There really wasn't
much precedent

for anything like this in
the DNA of living things,

and when you see
something unusual,

you automatically
assume that it's interesting.

That's just how science works.

CRISPR is actually
clustered regularly interspaced

palindromic repeats, and so,

it's actually named
for the repeats.

But what was really interesting

were these sequences in between

that were completely enigmatic.

Spacers.

And each spacer was different.

Never seen anything
like this before.

Where the hell come
these sequences from?

I have my own way of kind of

telling the story in short form,

is, I show this article
from 2007, right?

Five years before anybody
was talking about CRISPR,

and it's this headline

from a yogurt company saying,

"Holy grail is discovered."

And what was this yogurt
company's holy grail?

It was CRISPR.

It was CRISPR.

When did you get your
CRISPR license plate?

The first one I got back
in the days in Wisconsin,

and when I first moved
to North Carolina...

It was one of the
first things I did,

was to make sure I still
had my CRISPR rights

with my CRISPR-mobile.

People were, like, "Have you
heard about this CRISPR thing?"

And I'm, like, "Dude, like,

"I've heard of this
CRISPR thing for ten years.

Like, what the hell
are you talking about?"

Danisco is a company
that sells microbes

to people who want to make food.

A lot of foods are produced
using bacteria, and...

Yogurt, for example.

Rodolphe was trying
to work out how to deal

with the problem of
his bacterial cultures

suddenly dying because
of viral infections.

Most people don't wake up

in the morning and think about

how bacteria defend
themselves against viruses.

It's just not on
their, on their,

on the sort of front and
center in people's agenda,

but it should be.

Viruses are very
simple lean machines.

They have one job
to do: look for a host,

take the host over,
and multiply, that's it.

The virus will
attach to the surface,

and then it will inject
its genetic material.

It hijacks the cell
and use the cell

just as a factory
of new viruses.

And then it's over.

It's over for the cell.

This is when people call
companies like Danisco and say,

"You sold us a culture
that's not working.

We want our money back."

But there's a small
subset of the population

that survives the viral attack.

We don't know why they make it,

but they make it.

They become resistant.

At that time, we still don't
know what CRISPR is

and what it does,

so there's no assumption
that CRISPR is involved.

Then what we do is, we
take the survivor that made it,

and then we check its DNA.

The DNA sequence had changed.

There are new spacers

that were not present before,

and those spacers are identical

to sequences from the
virus that infect bacteria.

And now it's immune.

So now scientists have a clue,

and, you know, at
this point, of course,

you've sort of put your
Sherlock Holmes hat on,

you take in your
virtual pipe, and you go,

"What are these
clues telling us?"

We do the experiment
five different times.

And consistently, the
bacteria acquired a spacer

that contains a
sequence from the virus

and became resistant.

So what if I take it away?

You lose the resistance.

Without that little
piece of DNA,

the microbial cell, the
bacterial cell, will die,

and if it had it,
it would survive.

Oh, that was,
like, that was, like,

"We got it."

CRISPR is an immune system.

What an idea:

a piece of the genome
of your predator

now stuck in your genome so
you can recognize it in the future.

Bacteria have memory.

They are able to
remember invaders,

recognize them, and kill them.

That was really fantastic.

At the time, you
know, it's useful

in manufacturing cultures
that are resistant to viruses.

It's extremely
valuable to Danisco.

You know, but...

But we don't know
what the future holds.

We have no idea
how useful or not

this technology is gonna
be or pan out in the end.

I think I first heard about it

when I had coffee
with Jill Banfield,

my colleague here at Berkeley,

at the Free Speech
Movement Café,

classic Berkeley café.

One thing they'll write
on my tombstone was,

"Told Jennifer Doudna
about CRISPR-Cas."

Like, that will be
the sum of my life.

I love things that
not a lot of people

are paying attention to,
which certainly CRISPR was

in its early days, not
anymore, but, but, you know,

in the early days,
it was like that.

But then you
always ask yourself,

"Huh, is everybody else
just a lot smarter than me

"and they've figured out
that this is a, you know,

a dead path and..."

So we've got the
antibody tethered to Cas9.

It's finding the T
cell-specific antigen.

We're biochemists in the lab.

We study the way molecules work.

We try to isolate them from

all of the other pieces
and parts of the cell.

We love to ask,

"Well, what are the essential
parts of this little machine?"

In nature, what CRISPR
systems are doing is,

they're giving bacteria
immunity to viruses,

so they're protecting
them from viruses.

When an invader shows up,

the bacterium has a
way to store a small bit

of the invader's
DNA in its own DNA.

When the invader comes back,

the bacterium makes a copy,

like a little "Most Wanted"
poster of that spacer,

and gives it to the
marvelous machine

at the heart of CRISPR,

this extraordinary
protein that we call Cas9.

Cas9 is truly wondrous.

When Cas9 polices

the intercellular
neighborhood for invasions,

it literally carries a copy

of that "Most
Wanted" poster with it.

Asking everyone that comes in,

"Excuse me, do you
contain an exact match

"to this little 'Most Wanted'
poster that I'm carrying?

Yes? Then I'll cut you."

The thing about Cas9
that struck me at the time

was that, you
know, fundamentally,

this thing was a
programmable protein

that finds and cuts DNA.

As a tool, right, you
could immediately see

a lot of uses for
something like that.

I will never forget

reading the last paragraph
of Jennifer Doudna's

and Emmanuelle
Charpentier's deservedly...

"immortal" is a strong word,
so I'm gonna use it carefully...

immortal science paper

in which they describe
that Cas9 can be directed.

Cas9 cuts DNA based on
an instruction that it carries,

and that instruction
is a molecule of RNA

that matches perfectly
the DNA of the invader.

RNA, I think about it as
DNA's chemical cousin.

Like DNA, it has four letters,

and they can form pairs
with matching letters in DNA.

The letters in the RNA

allow Cas9 to find a
unique DNA sequence.

Bacteria were programming
this thing all the time

with different viral
sequences, and then using it

to find and cut and
destroy those viruses.

But because it's using
these little RNA molecules,

those can easily be exchanged.

RNA molecules
are trivial to make

in a molecular biology lab
or order from a company.

And I can cut any DNA I
want just by changing this,

this little piece of RNA.

It was clearly a useful
tool, and I, initially,

I was thinking about
it that way, right?

'Cause, you know, again,
I'm a biochemist, right?

I was thinking
about it as a tool.

I was thinking about
all the cool experiments

you could now do
with this tool, right?

I was thinking about that.

I wasn't thinking about...

Oh, my gosh, I mean,
this is a tool that,

you know, it
fundamentally allows us

to change our
relationship with nature.

It actually allows us to
change human evolution

if we want to.

Right? It's that,
it's that profound.

In my left hand here, I
have purified Cas9 nuclease,

and in my right hand
here, I have a guide RNA,

and so CRISPR essentially
is the combination

of these two ingredients.

It's actually millions
of Cas9 molecules,

and this is millions
of RNA molecules.

I have to say, it didn't
immediately hit me,

until I started seeing the
data, that this could be

an extraordinary transformation.

You know, it was real.

You can actually use CRISPR
in humans to change DNA.

You can actually do it.

Here's a copy of a human gene.

You give it to a Cas9 and
put it inside human cells.

It runs away,

finds that DNA, and cuts it.

Before CRISPR, we were getting

one to two percent correction.

We're now up to 50%
to 80% of the cells.

This could really work.

This could really
cure a patient.

I think it's gonna
help a lot of people,

not just people
with sickle cell,

'cause I know they're
working on it for other things.

And I know so many other people

that have, that
have things like this,

like, like my friend, he...

uh, had leukemia.

He actually didn't make
it out of the hospital.

If he had it just
a little bit later,

of course, he probably
could have been cured of that,

'cause that's what
they're working on.

CRISPR has, really, the ability

to recognize and to
target any piece of DNA

in any type of
cell and organism.

It's really a universal tool.

It's often described as a
kind of Swiss Army knife.

We have thousands of customers

who are working with
CRISPR in a wide variety

of organisms, pretty
much any organism

you can think of,
from butterflies

to dogs to horses
to wheat to corn.

We have a design tool online.

You can specify a gene that
you're looking to knock out.

You can specify
the types of edit

that you're looking to do.

You swipe your credit card,

and a few days later,

a couple of tubes
of all the materials

that you need show
up at your door.

Obviously, we like to validate

the, the researchers'
authenticity and credibility

with regard to
their institution.

Meaning you're not
just shipping it off?

Correct, we don't
ship to just anyone.

That's correct.

The analogy I
like is automobiles.

There were cars before
there were Model Ts,

but they were expensive and
they broke down all the time.

Ford comes out with the
Model T, and, suddenly,

it's cheap and it's reliable.

Pretty soon,
everybody's got a car.

CRISPR gives us the chance to
make precise, targeted changes

in the DNA of any
living organism.

It's a power to
change the biosphere.

That's what makes
CRISPR revolutionary.

Can you just sort of describe

where we are right now?

Oh, here? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, so here is the, um...

eGenesis garage.

This is our lab space.

It's literally the basement.

I feel it's a
humble start for us

where we embark on
a very exciting journey.

The field is called
xenotransplantation,

transplantation of an organ
from one species to the next.

These things have
actually been tried a lot,

and some of them
are pretty weird.

Like, people were,
were, you know,

in the early 1800s,
that kind of stuff,

they were trying to
transplant monkey testes

into men to make
them more virile.

So, so, you know, conceptually,

people have been
trying this for a long time,

but scientifically, this field is
probably about 20 years old.

Whether we like
to believe or not,

we are very similar to the pig.

This pig, this pig, this pig,

all the organs in these
pigs have been modified

very, very slightly.

They tried it 20 years ago.

Novartis had had a
billion-dollar investment in it,

sort of gracefully,
uh, retreated.

They, they just didn't
have the technology.

Without the
CRISPRs... can't do it.

Luhan Yang and her team,

they started as a
ragtag team of scientists

in my academic lab,

and then they went
to a ragtag team

in the basement of,
of a startup incubator.

Nice to meet you... hey.

Happy Halloween.

You know, I dressed
up today, you know?

Can you see anything?

Kind of... something,
not everything.

So this is Yinan,
Yinan is quite creative.

Probably more creative than me.

When I first heard the story,

I thought, it is
sci-fi, you know?

We're going to, we're
going to make a pig

that doesn't speak
human language,

but because they
can donate organs

for the, for the patient
and save the world from,

like, organ shortage.

I mean, it really takes a lot.

As you can imagine,
if you put the organ

from the pig into the
human, there's a rejection.

We can really exercise
the power of CRISPR

to engineer immunocompatibility
by knocking out genes

and knocking in genes.

If you compare the pig genome

to an encyclopedia
of this thick,

so what CRISPR does is,
it can find, like, a specific,

a specific word in
the encyclopedia

and delete that word.

But instead of, like,
deleting a few words,

we have to change
paragraphs after paragraph.

Right now, the
conventional practice

is doing one or two genes.

And the record
before us is five.

We did 62 genes in single step.

We have a revolution going on

that we've never
had a revolution like.

The closest we've come
is, is maybe the internet

and computer revolution.

And that took us
kind of unaware.

We do a lot of iteration
of the pig production.

How are the pigs coming along?

They are coming.

So, uh...

We are expecting some
pigs in, in a few weeks.

We're so excited, we
even named the pig.

The first one is Laika.

It's the name of the Soviet dog

which orbit the Earth first.

We want to symbolize
it as an animal

which can lead us to
a new era of science.

This is Aldous Huxley,

a man haunted by a
vision of hell on Earth.

Mr. Huxley 27 years ago
wrote "Brave New World."

Today, Mr. Huxley says that
his fictional world of horror

is probably just around
the corner for all of us.

I first read "Brave New World"

in a literature
class in high school,

and, yeah, it was startling,

and, yeah, it was provocative.

Um...

But I reread it recently,

and I was startled by
how a book written in 1932

could have the
foresight to predict

in vitro fertilization.

Now, of course,
it went beyond it.

It told a story where

human beings were
literally manufactured

to play specific
roles in society.

It was so sobering to me because

CRISPR makes that original worry

about engineering human
heredity actually feasible.

We mustn't be caught by surprise

by our own advancing technology.

This has happened
again and again in history,

where technology has advanced

and this changes
social conditions,

and suddenly, people
have found themselves

in a situation which
they didn't foresee

and doing all sorts of things
they didn't really want to do.

There is no question
in my mind that

as this field advances,

people will be able to

order a change in
their genetic makeup

to create an outcome
of interest to them:

in their metabolism,
in their appearance;

in principle, potentially,
in who they are as people,

personality changes.

And, again, we
have to be delicate

to not cross into
science fiction territory.

We know that we could
engineer a single gene, myostatin,

in a way that could potentially

make us all more muscular,

but should we make
that universally available?

They discovered
that there are people

who can go by on
four hours of sleep.

What would I give
for that mutation?

One gene, one change,

four hours of sleep, no problem.

So... should this
be, I don't know,

a job requirement for
air traffic controllers?

Do I want the world to go there?

There are people
who feel no pain.

This was discovered by studying

a 14-year-old boy in Pakistan

who felt no pain, and
guess what he did?

He performed street theater.

He died before
his 14th birthday.

He jumped, for
money, off a house roof.

He knew it would be painless.

The study of his DNA revealed

he has a mutation in one gene.

It makes a protein that
transmits the pain signal

from the periphery...
your finger, or your skin...

through the spine to your brain.

You get rid of that gene,

you cannot transmit the
signal, you feel no pain.

Why?

Well, I'll give you
a legitimate reason.

Pain due to cancer is terrible,

especially if it's
terminal cancer

and we know a person
has months to live.

Why not get rid of that gene?

And I'm sure this will
be... I am sure this will be.

We will have gene
editing of that gene

to treat cancer pain.

Now...

Do I want a scenario where
there are parts of the world

where special forces soldiers
are made immune to torture?

I don't think my
job is that different

than what scientists do.

There's a lot of kind
of hunting around,

hunting and pecking, you know,

looking under things,
turning over stones.

And then eventually, you know,

you kind of get on
the scent of something,

and then that's
when the fun starts.

Before science gets published,

it circulates among scientists.

The papers go out for review.

Someone passes
it to somebody else.

Like, they have a
certain circulation,

and so I'd gotten onto
the trail of these papers

coming out of China.

This was the first case where
someone had said about,

you know, "I'm gonna use CRISPR,

and I'm gonna modify
a human embryo."

They had knocked out CCR5.

This is a receptor
that, if you don't have it,

you can't get
infected with H.I.V.

But think about what
they were proposing.

They said, "We're gonna make
someone who's immune to H.I.V."

Once I started digging into it,

I found more examples of people

that were thinking
along these lines.

John Zhang runs the
third- or fourth-biggest

fertility clinic in the country,

and then he started a
company called Darwin Life.

He said that he was
enthusiastic about

the whole idea of
designer babies.

He basically said that,

"Of course, that's
the whole point."

There was a company
called OvaScience

that I discovered
a tape recording

that they had put on their own
website of a investor meeting.

We will be able to
correct mutations

before we generate your child.

It may not be 50
years, actually.

It may only be ten, the
way things are going.

I ended up having several dreams

that were very intense
for me at the time,

where I walked into a
room and a colleague said,

"I want to introduce
you to someone,

"and I want you to tell
them... They want to...

They want to know about CRISPR."

And I walked into this
room, and, and it was...

There was a
silhouette of a chair

with someone sitting
with their back to me,

and as they turned
around, I realized with horror

that it was Adolf
Hitler, you know?

And he leaned
over, and he said...

"So tell me all about
how Cas9 works."

I remember waking
up from that dream

and I was shaking.

And I thought, "Oh, my gosh,
I mean, what have I done?"

Five-and-a-half years ago,

it was recognized
that we could take

the CRISPR system
out of bacteria

and move it first
into a test tube

and then into mammalian cells,

and use it as a tool
for genome editing.

The Cas9 protein is gonna
make the cut in the DNA.

We are correcting
the sickle mutation

in blood cells.

So if it's a woman,

their eggs are not corrected.

If it's a man, the
sperm is not corrected.

That change will not get passed
along to future generations.

So they will be cured,

but their children might
get the disease, as well.

Now we need to give the
cell another piece of DNA,

except instead
of having the T...

It has an A.

So why not just do it

so that the diseased gene

never gets passed along
to future generations?

And there are some
people out there who think

that's all we should do.

But we may be creating things

that we can't put
back into the bottle.

When we engineer gene
changes into my blood

or into my skin,

those gene changes die with me,

but the germ cells...
sperm and eggs,

embryos... those
cells are very different.

They're part of what
we call "the germ line."

If we engineer gene
changes into my sperm,

they're passed to my son.

They're passed to
his son and forever.

My colleagues and I wrote

a fairly strongly
worded piece in "Nature"

with the fairly
unequivocal title,

"Do Not Edit the
Human Germ Line."

We proposed that there be
an unconditional moratorium:

Don't edit human embryos,

don't use edited sperm and
eggs to make human embryos...

just nothing.

We must understand that

when we authorize research
on human embryo editing,

we are enabling, ultimately,

human embryo editing
for human enhancement.

That's what we're doing.

We're putting the
recipe out into the world.

The debate that's being had

is whether society
should go in this direction.

Should you be allowed to make

a genetic change into
the next generation

that'll then go on to
other generations?

The gene pool,

like nature itself, is
kind of a common good.

I used to have a T-shirt,
and it had a little...

A guy that was kind
of a DNA spiral, right?

But he was the lifeguard
and he's blowing a whistle,

and he says, "Hey, you,
get out of the gene pool!"

I loved that shirt.

Baby shopping.

Imagine being able to
program the I.Q. of a baby.

Will we be sitting at
computer terminals like this one

punching up the traits we
would like in our children,

like the shape of their faces
or the color of their eyes?

Well, you know, the
fear that everybody

focuses on most is this whole,
this designer baby business.

We're turning
reproduction into production.

We're turning children
into consumer products.

Every time there's
a new technology,

we hear the same concerns.

If there's a market for cloning,

there is no force on Earth

that will keep buyer
and seller apart.

Perhaps Saddam Hussein
would like to give birth to himself.

With CRISPR,

even reputable magazines

could not resist the temptation.

A little thing that says,

"High I.Q."

As if we know
what intelligence is,

let alone how to measure
it, let alone how to design it.

Why do we keep ignoring the fact

that we've seen
the same argument

every decade for
the last five decades?

And these nightmares,

they haven't come to pass.

We are capable
of really evil things,

but we don't need
technology to commit evil acts.

If the goal is genocide,
if the goal is eugenics,

if the goal is discrimination,

there will be another way
to do it and it will be found.

I kind of divide the world
into the bio-optimists

and the bio-pessimists.

Space: the final frontier.

I grew up with the
original "Star Trek,"

and have been a devoted follower

of all of the "Star
Treks" since then.

I've read pretty much
every "Star Trek" novel.

Don't get me started.

It is a vision of progress

and the potential of
science to make life better.

There are other people

who have read
the cautionary tales.

A blade runner's job is
to hunt down replicants,

manufactured humans you
can't tell from the real thing.

But I don't think
the technologies

are inherently good or evil.

The technologies are
tools, they are power.

What you do with the
power determines if the result

is something that we applaud
or something that we deplore.

But it's not the tool that
determines the end point.

It's the user.

Now here are 23 representing
mother's chromosomes,

23 for father's.

Now, we put them together.

Our way of determining

the inheritance of
the next generation

is a lottery.

And it's a perfectly
good argument to say,

"I would rather determine it

than take a lottery."

Well, I think the right
way to say it is that

sex is for recreation

and science is for procreation.

50 years from now,
people may say, like,

"I can't believe
those barbaric people

"in the early 21st century,

"they were having kids this
crazy, old-fashioned way.

"They were just,
like, rolling the dice

with their kids' lives."

We've gone through
in vitro fertilization.

We've harvested the eggs.

It's not uncommon to produce
multiple viable embryos.

Which one do you choose?

One possibility is, "Yeah,
just, we'll just roll the dice.

We'll just... I'll
just point at one."

Another option would be

I run some fancy genetic tests.

Pre-implantation genetic
diagnosis is the process

of doing genetic
tests on an embryo.

When I talk to
most people about it,

they think it's science fiction,

but it was first used
clinically in 1990.

With today's technology,
you've been limited

to looking at only
a handful of traits.

But soon, genome sequencing

will become cheap enough,
easy enough, and accurate enough

that you'll be able
to learn everything

genetics can tell you.

In the future, let's
imagine that CRISPR

gets really, really good.

Maybe you don't need to
produce lots of embryos.

Maybe you just produce one,

but you can make
whatever edits you want to it.

So the carrier screening

that I was talking about earlier

tends to focus on disorders

that show up early.

Everyone wants to have
a healthy, perfect baby.

I think that's a
universal truth.

You know, "How can I make sure

"that my child will be healthy?

"How can I make
sure that, you know,

"they're gonna have some
of these positive traits,

"that they're gonna do well,

they're gonna
learn well, and...?"

Looking at this family
history, certainly, I...

The opinion is that information
is good, and almost everyone

that talks to me wants
more information,

and even wants more...
like, we'll give them

a whole bunch of information,
and they even want more.

- I - know my
grandmother also...

I actually first heard
about genetic counseling

from my mother.

Hemophilia A is the
condition that runs in my family.

It's a genetic
bleeding disorder.

There is a gene on
the X chromosome.

It encodes for a
protein called factor VIII.

When factor VIII isn't working,

you can have a bleed
that will lead to death.

If I decide to have
children naturally,

without reproductive technology,

I am putting that
child at 25% risk

to have a really
severe disorder.

That responsibility
feels like it's on me.

It takes it from the universe's
decision to my decision.

Today, I'm unusual,
because I know that

I'm a carrier of a
genetic condition,

but soon, everyone will know

genetic information
about themselves.

What about the cost of it?

In the short term, there's
a disturbing possibility

that people with means

will be availing themselves
of this technology,

and people who don't
have those means will not.

So I kind of hope for a future

where government
makes it free for everybody.

You would have a generally
healthier population,

maybe longer-lived
population on average,

maybe slightly smarter
population on average.

So if you have a smaller
fraction of your population

with Down syndrome,

the average intelligence
is a little bit higher,

and, you know,

society might run a
little bit more efficiently

if people are a
little bit smarter.

What is the bearing
of the laws of heredity

upon human affairs?

Eugenics provides the
answer, so far as this is known.

Eugenics seeks to apply
the known laws of heredity

so as to prevent the
degeneration of the race

and improve its
inborn qualities.

Well, the concept
of eugenics, if you,

if you go way back,

it really just means good genes.

The idea is that the human
race could improve itself.

It was, of course, hijacked,

and when people today
talk about eugenics,

they think specifically of
the Nazis, of Nazi Germany,

of compulsory
sterilization, where, by force,

people were compelled
to be sterilized or killed

because the state
didn't like their genes.

There was shock last
month over the revelation

that the State of Virginia
sterilized thousands of persons

between 1922 and '72

in a program aimed at ridding
the state of so-called misfits.

What we're talking about here,

where we're being paid
to do these genetic tests

by loving parents who
want to have a healthy child,

to equate that with Nazism is,

I think, just not, not just
stupid, but actually insane.

I've taken the
liberty of eradicating

any potentially
prejudicial conditions:

alcoholism and
addictive susceptibility,

propensity for violence,
obesity, et cetera.

We didn't want... I, I
mean, diseases, yes,

but, uh... Right, we
were just wondering

if, if it's good to just leave
a few things to, to chance.

You want to give your
child the best possible start.

Now, keep in mind,
this child is still you,

simply the best of you.

My greatest fear
in life, honestly,

I, my two greatest
fears, going back to me

wanting to be a mom
at the age of five,

my first-greatest fear is that

I wouldn't be able
to have a child,

and my second-greatest fear

is that something would
be wrong with my child.

Okay, good job,
not too much water.

Oh, careful, sweetie.

With Ruthie, I
started seeing that

she kind of wasn't tracking.

When I would feed her, her
eyes would slide back and forth.

Hi...

And then one day, I
went to my friend's house,

and her baby looked
me right in the eyes.

And I came home
to Ethan and I said,

"There's something wrong."

We did genetic testing.

She inherited one mutated
copy of this OCA2 gene from me

and one from Palmer.

I don't think I even
really understood

that people with albinism

had such impairment
of their vision.

It's kind of like wrapping
Saran Wrap over your eyes

with Vaseline.

Very, very hard for her to see.

Hi.

Now I just, like,
wanted to protect her.

Like, this isn't true,
this isn't happening.

It was horrible...

It was bad.

One, two, three, four.

Okay, Ruthie, Ruthie!

Whoa!

Hi.

She was really easy and happy.

Whoo!

And early on, I think
we wondered if she was

sort of, I don't know,

protected by the fact
that she couldn't see a lot.

Look, I have a flashlight!

That the world
wasn't as noisy to her.

Blue! Light it, light it!

She was smart and talkative.

Come here, Yoda.

Super-curious.

You don't know
what you don't know.

You don't know that,

even though it's
going to be different

than what you thought,
you don't know, you know,

maybe how much
better that's going to be.

I want to be a professional
basketball player,

but I don't think
that's gonna happen.

Can I hold him?

"Mission is simply one..."

Well, I mean, I've
known about CRISPR

from the perspective
of being a doctor

probably since
the first publications

in whatever it was, 2012.

Oh, they've come
to teach the Natives...

It really didn't intersect

with our own world, with Ruthie,

until probably about
a year and a half ago,

when I read
something on Twitter.

A scientist who I respect
a lot said he thought that

in one or two generations,
that all children would be born

with all of these genetic
abnormalities edited out.

I know people who have children

who have really
debilitating diseases

that make their children suffer,

make their
families suffer a lot,

so I totally understand

the desire to change that.

But the rest of it
scares me to death.

I don't know where
you draw the line

between not having albinism

and deciding your kid
needs to be an extra foot taller

so they can be a good
oarsman and go to Yale.

You know, where...
where is that line?

Who's going to draw that?

We're maybe a society
who is afraid of things

that are different or afraid
of people who are different,

afraid of people who have needs.

I worry that when we're

manipulating future generations,

those opinions are
going to be passed on.

You know, we as
a society may think

that doing better on the S.A.Ts.
is better than doing worse.

Being taller,

being handsomer,
being more creative,

being more courageous,

those are traits that we would
want to potentially select for.

Should we go there?

Is there an inevitability
to going there?

You know, sometimes,
I'm invited to give a talk on,

like, kind of futuristic
science things,

and I've had tall, blonde
trophy wives come up to me

after the talk and say,
"Wow, that was incredible.

"That was an incredibly
interesting talk,

"but don't you think there's
a problem with all this?

"Won't every parent
just select their kids

to be tall and blonde?"

The geeks all come up to me
and say, "Isn't this dangerous,

"'cause all the parents
are gonna select

for the smartest kid
they can possibly get?"

'Cause that's what
the geeks think is cool.

You know, probably if you were
talking to some NFL coaches,

they'd say, "Oh, what,
everyone's gonna,

"everyone's gonna
select their kid to be 6'5"

and run a 4.240," you know?

So, um, there will
be a wide range

of what people think

is the right thing to
select for or engineer for.

And, actually, there's
nothing wrong with that, right?

Let a million flowers bloom.

On this estate 30
miles north of San Diego

is housed a sperm bank
said to be made up exclusively

of donations by Nobel
Prize-winning scientists.

The bank's founder will
consider for fertilization

only women of high intelligence.

You don't know about
the Nobel sperm bank?

Businessman inventor
Robert Graham

adds liquid nitrogen once a week

to a lead-shielded
sperm repository

in an underground concrete
bunker in his backyard.

The more good genes
in the human gene pool,

the more good individuals
will come out of it.

We aren't even thinking
in terms of a super race.

The so-called genius sperm bank,

a sperm bank to
provide women, for free,

with donor semen from men
that they viewed as geniuses.

We utilize sources such as this:

"Who's Who of Emerging Leaders."

Very few women
actually went ahead

and took advantage of this offer

to be given superior
sperm for free.

I did a tour of sperm
banks for the U.S. Congress.

I think I'm the only
person who's ever gone

on a congressionally financed
tour of California sperm banks.

Despite the fact that
the donors are described

taller, skinnier, you
know, better-looking or not,

people tended to pick somebody
who looked like their partner,

no matter how imperfect,

because the emotional
importance of the connection

outweighed any notion of

improvability or perfectibility.

If I were trying to have
a child and my partner

was light-skinned,
short, with eczema,

I would have had
a child with a guy

who was light-skinned,
short, and prone to eczema.

But what if you could
take that guy's sperm

and edit those
specific things out?

Could I change his sperm

so it's still him,
but a better him?

Exactly, yeah. Right?

Maybe, but every change
does come with risks

that you'll make
changes you didn't intend,

so I think it'd be
a long, long time

before you would take
that risk for anything

other than something
that was pretty significant.

But I might want
to take advantage

of editing something
out that would give my kid

a very strong chance of
developing a severe cancer,

even if it's 40
years in the future.

Yeah.

So maybe that will happen.

This committee's gonna
be looking at both somatic

and germ line
applications of gene editing.

The committee that I co-chaired

for the National
Academy of Sciences,

we were asked to look deeply

at whether or not
there was something

intrinsically unethical

about manipulating genes in a
way that makes them heritable.

Significant degree
of uncertainty...

This should be
the goal of society,

to promote a better life for all

and to ensure that
everybody can live a life

in dignity and freedom.

Can this be achieved by
germ line gene editing?

My view is no.

The American
Medical Association,

a bunch of European
countries, you know,

any number of organizations
all had positions,

like, meddling in the
germ line would be wrong.

It would be unethical.

But they all said those things

at a time when it couldn't be
done, so it was easy to say.

It was a gimme, right?

And then as soon as it
comes that you can do it,

then the positions change.

Huntington's lurks in
our DNA like a time bomb.

It would really eliminate
a scourge in the world,

so I would say go for it.

At the big National
Academy meeting,

there was not a good
representation of patients,

but the few who did speak
were definitely in favor.

I say, yes, it is worth pursuing

in a safe and rational manner.

Definitely, let's go.

Anything that will stop

my child from suffering,

I'm for.

You know, draw this ethical
line wherever you want,

but don't draw it in
front of my disease.

He was six days old.

I remember one woman
told a story about a child

that she had and died
of an inheritable disease.

He had seizures every day.

We donated his
body for research.

If we have...

The skills and the knowledge

to fix these diseases,
then freaking do it.

The statement of
task demanded that we

try to follow the evidence
and follow the logic,

not that we follow the politics.

We said, "We conclude
it is not intrinsically evil."

It is what we called
ethically defensible,

but we understood that this
was now a break from the past

in the thinking
on this topic, yes.

In Genesis chapter one,

we discovered the
concept of the Imago Dei,

being in the image
and likeness of God.

What does that
mean for this science

where we have the capacity

to edit in some things, perhaps,
that we think are important?

Are we playing God?

The balance of nature
is built of a series

of interrelationships
between living things

and between living things
and their environment.

Now, to these
people, apparently,

the balance of nature
was something that was

repealed as soon as
man came on the scene.

This is Laika, this is Nova,

and this is Joy.

Our pig is the most advanced
genome-modified animal

running on the Earth.

The babies that came out of that

are now adults, and the adults
are having their own babies,

so it seems like
making that many edits

is completely compatible

with a happy, healthy pig.

I tell people to be
visually underwhelmed

by my lab.

It's just a bunch of small rooms

with usually very
few people in them.

But in terms of what I see,

it's very exciting.

I've never really felt
the "mad scientist"

was realistic for
anybody that I knew,

including myself.

My lab has been accused
of taking science fiction

and turning it
into science fact.

I consider that
very high praise.

But turning science fiction
into science fact is not mad.

It actually can be quite useful.

"Aging reversal" is
the term that I prefer.

You know, I'm 63 years old.

I feel like I just barely got
trained to do my job last year,

and so now you're gonna
pull the plug and recycle me.

That doesn't make sense.

We need to be cautious
in that, you know,

there's a, there's this
whole population problem,

so we can do that if we have
a place to put all those people.

Almost everything we do,

people just think,
"This is goofy,

this is not feasible,
it's science fiction."

But I think, originally,

people thought that
sequencing human genomes

inexpensively was a pipe dream.

I can't not ask you
about mammoths

because there's a
bunch of them behind you.

Yeah, that should be up
at the top of the list of things

that seem, uh,
quixotic or misguided.

So in the Mammoth Project,

we read the ancient DNA,

decide which genes
we're going to resurrect,

put those into the
Asian elephant's cells,

and then we're
developing technology

that is not yet working to make,

take those embryos
all the way to term.

Then we scale that up to
make a herd of these things,

maybe 80,000 of them,
to repopulate the tundra.

Don't you see the danger,

John, inherent in
what you're doing here?

Genetic power is the
most awesome force

the planet's ever
seen, but you wield it

like a kid that's
found his dad's gun.

I don't think you're
giving us our due credit.

Our scientists have done things

which nobody's ever done before.

Yeah, yeah, but your scientists

were so preoccupied with
whether or not they could,

they didn't stop to
think if they should.

Well,

I often try to avoid talking
about "Jurassic Park,"

but I'll, I'll give you this.

You know, "Jurassic
Park" was about hubris.

What species is this?

Uh, it's a velociraptor.

It's just the opposite

of what scientists
like George Church

and others that we work
with are thinking about.

When people say,
"Aren't you playing God?"

My real reaction is,

nobody is playing in this field.

Nobody is toying with it

just to see if it can happen.

You know, in order
to even fathom

bringing back an
extinct species,

there's no end of engineering
that has to happen,

and it is all novel,
important, new science

that can be used to
protect any species,

endangered as well as extinct.

Once you realize the magnitude

of humans' impact
on the environment,

you know, it's
hard for me to say

that we can't try to correct it.

We can't have our
head in the sand.

We have a responsibility

to use our human ingenuity

and our human skills
and our wherewithal.

Sometimes it's
leaving nature alone,

and sometimes it
might be intervening.

So the gene we've edited

controls how the pores

on the underside of the
leaves open and close.

In the non-edited plant,
the stomata or pores

will stay open during
the hot, dry conditions.

Water is lost, and then
these leaves lose water.

They wilt, and they roll.

In the edited plant,
those stomata pores

close sooner
under dry conditions

and the water is
retained inside the plant.

We have been messing with nature

ever since we came
out of the trees.

Most of the lifeforms we
eat are things we've made.

Corn used to be a grass.

Tomatoes used to be

tiny little berries
that were bitter.

Geneticists changed that.

Now, we didn't call
them geneticists.

We called them farmers.

Do you think among these
people there was anyone

that would be fair
to call a scientist?

Well, that's a really
interesting question.

I think there's lots
of different types

of science that were involved.

The first people
who invented pottery

were really chemists,
in a way, um...

And certainly the people
who were inventing agriculture

and control, controlling
plants and animals,

they were biologists, you
know, botanists and biologists,

in our sense.

You know, you can see
people trying things out.

What is the best way

to grind grain, and how
do you make bread?

You know, that
was invented here.

To work that out...

Is really not, is
not straightforward.

In this period of time,
something more modern-like

in terms of our
relationship with nature

was beginning to emerge.

As far as we understand it,

hunter-gatherers
had a relationship

of equality with nature
and had to look after nature,

and if you hunted an animal,

you would have to
give a gift to nature

to thank it for the animal
that you'd been given.

And then as people started

domesticating
plants and animals,

they started having
a new relationship,

where they were dominating

and controlling
the natural world...

That made it something
that you could transform.

We definitely see

great advantages in
genetic engineering,

as agriculture, you know,
was a great, a great advance.

Certainly, it's
the building block

of civilization as
we understand it.

But it definitely comes
with its negatives.

You could say that the
long-term consequences

were pollution

and environment degradation
and so on and so forth,

but you would have
had to be very far-seeing,

you know, 9,000 years
ago to realize that,

that that was what
was gonna happen.

These things creep in slowly.

It's not like everybody
was hunting and gathering,

and then next year,
somebody said,

"Oh, let's farm," right?

It happened slowly,
and so it is disruptive,

but it creeps up on people.

You don't realize
it's disruptive

until you look backward.

Often you don't realize

that you're in the middle
of a revolution until

after the revolution
has occurred.

Right? So I don't know
where we are right now.

It'll be interesting to see.

I hope I live long
enough to see it.

Do you think you
want to have kids?

I have too many
siblings for that.

The answer's
probably gonna change,

but for now, probably not, no.

I'm not crazy.

They're saying maybe
one day with CRISPR,

they could go in and change

the gene in the embryo

so that the kid, when it's born,

doesn't have sickle cell.

Hmm.

I guess that's kind of
cool, that they're thinking

that it can do
that in the future,

but I think that would be

up to the kid later.

What do you mean?

There's a lot of things that
I learned having sickle cell

just because I had it.

I learned patience
with everyone.

I learned, uh,

just to be positive.

So you don't wish
that you never had it.

I don't wish that
I never had it, no.

I don't think I'd be me if
I didn't have sickle cell.

Sickle cell's a
really interesting,

unusual genetic disease.

If you've got two
copies of the sickle gene,

you're really sick, and
without modern medicine,

you die young.

If you've got two copies
of the normal gene,

you don't get
sickle cell at all.

It turns out, though,
that if you've got

one sickle gene and
one nonsickle gene,

you make cells that
are somewhat sickle?

You're not sick,

but the organism
that causes malaria

doesn't like those
red blood cells.

Having a sickle gene
is protective against

getting severe malaria,

so in the environment
where there's lots of malaria,

it's better to be
sickle cell trait

than not to be
sickle cell trait.

And that's why you
see sickle cell anemia

in sub-Saharan Africa,

but you also see it
in the Mediterranean,

in Greece and in Sardinia.

It's because they had
mosquitoes and malaria.

The relationship between

our genes and our environment

is incredibly complex.

"Thanks, little brothers..."

And we don't understand that.

I think we have
to have humility.

Nature is one of the
greatest inventors of all time.

What we can do
is, is a very, very

insignificant fraction of
what nature has already done.

Nature invented CRISPR.

So now we're mixing
the cells with the CRISPR.

That's beautiful.

Once it's into the cell,

that starts the editing process.

We can't see that, we
just know it happens.

I don't know how,

out of all the genes
that you have,

that it targets the one

that's doing sickle cell

and not the thing that's
making you grow hair.

Oh...

But it does, apparently.

Like, that's cool.

You have to appreciate
that this is a technology

that's only about
five years old,

but it's been deployed
incredibly rapidly.

We've never had
the ability to change

the fundamental chemical nature

of who we are
in this way, right?

And now we do, and
what do we do with that?

It does make us really

think deeply about what
it means to be human.

What do we value
about human society?

And I know for myself...

The things that
make us most human

are some of the most
genetically complex,

which is kind of a relief.

Creativity...

Emotionality.

Love.

Now, I want to be clear:

they all have a
biological basis.

They are all written in our DNA.

But we are a very,
very, very long way away

from being able
to edit the person.

Do you think that day will come?

I do, but I'm hopeful that

we will mature as a species

before we get this incredible
technology to play with

for our own detriment.

I am hopeful for that, yes.

Is that hope based in fact?

We'll see.

How might we like
to change our genes?

Perhaps we would like to alter

the uneasy balance
of our emotions.

Could we be less warlike,

more self-confident,
more serene?

Perhaps.

Ours is, whether
we like it or not,

an age of transition.

After two billion years,

this is, in a sense, the
end of the beginning.