(upbeat music)
- This is a tricky question,
but it's a critical one
since right now, we have the
technology to do just that.
Let's take mosquitoes as an example.
A few species of mosquito
are responsible for
hundreds of millions of
cases of illness each year
and hundreds of thousands to
millions of deaths each year.
Particularly, in developing nations.
Malaria, dengue, yellow fever, Zika.
These and other diseases take
a terrible toll on humanity.
What if we could engineer
all mosquitoes on Earth
to be incapable of carrying these diseases
and passing them on to us?
Or even eliminate these disease
causing mosquito species altogether.
We can, right now, using
a gene drive to spread
new DNA sequences
through wild populations.
The idea is that we use
gene editing to change
the DNA of the mosquito
so that the pathogens
can't get a foothold in
the mosquito which means
the mosquito can't pass
the pathogens onto us.
Then the mosquitoes go off
and make baby mosquitoes
which also carry the edited DNA.
Within a few generations,
all mosquitoes have the edited DNA.
Scientists have even designed
gene drives that would
sterilize wild mosquitoes
making it impossible
to make any mosquito
babies of that species.
We'd be sneaking a self
destruct button into
the mosquito genome and
letting it do our work for us.
No more nets, pesticides, or
nasty prophylactic medications.
I think the experiment
should go forward with many
built in pauses to assess the technology
and the current and future impact
of the gene drive on wildlife,
the environment and on people.
Most importantly, I think
a variety of stakeholders
must be involved in each of these pauses
and all data should be
fully and freely available
and transparent so that
informed decisions,
that can be reversed,
can be made at each step.
