GENETIC ENGINEERING
WONDERS and DANGERS
of GENETIC ENGINEERING
By Peter Solomon
The clock is ticking…
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE TODAY
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1. Email the NIH (The National Institute of Health) and demand oversight of Genetic Engineering.
(Use the "Ask NIH" form https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/ask-nih) - 2. Send the same email to your local, state and federal representatives.
- 3. Post the dangers on all your social media sites.
GENETIC ENGINEERING produced the COVID-19 vaccines in record time, can cure sickle cell disease, and promises cures for cancer. But gene editing has become so easy to do that without strict regulations, the technology could have dangerous, even disastrous, consequences.
The CRISPR-based gene-editing tool allows the cutting and pasting of pieces of DNA with almost the ease of editing a Word document. The 2020, Nobel Prize-winning gene editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9, was developed by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna.
Astonishingly, the tool uses the chemistry created by bacteria three billion years ago to give them immunity to attacks by viruses. The ancient bacteria incorporated a piece of the virus RNA into their own DNA as a kind of mugshot. They had the ability to recognize an invading virus based on that mugshot, and then had proteins to cut up the attacking virus’s RNA. The CRISPR tool uses that chemistry.
Genetic engineering offers enormous benefits in medicine (vaccines and disease therapies), agriculture (increased crop yields, reduced costs, and reduced need for pesticides and fertilizer), and rapidly growing trees to reduce global warming. But CRISPR could be employed to create mutant humans, giant soldiers, bioweapons, new viruses, grotesque animal hybrids, and even a new humanoid species. Could a genetically modified super species eradicate homo sapiens, like the homo sapiens eradicated the Neanderthals?
Jennifer Doudna warned, “The idea that you would affect evolution is a very profound thing.”
Isaac Asimov said, “The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.”
FROGS: Josiah Zayner is a biohacker, artist, and scientist best known for making hands-on genetic engineering, including CRISPR, accessible to a lay audience. Since founding his company, The Odin, in 2006, Zayner and his team have sold thousands of inexpensive gene-editing kits that allow individuals to practice feats of science once confined to a lab. With the release of their frog kits, people can alter a frog’s anatomy with a few simple injections right in their own homes to make it jump higher.
BABIES: The first babies with CRISPR-edited genes were born on November 25, 2018 in China. The babies were created by Dr. He Jiankui. He used CRISPR-Cas9 to rewrite DNA in embryos to eliminate the CCR5 gene, making the babies resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera. His actions led to widespread condemnation, an investigation, and a three-year prison sentence for violating medical regulations.
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warned us: “Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small lab. You can’t regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us.”
Is our current civilization ready for such capability?
In 2017, Hawking warned that humans would be extinct on Earth in 100 Years. The clock is ticking.
Please visit and follow https://www.instagram.com/100yearstoextinction/ and https://www.100yearstoextinction.com/ for more information on threats to human existence and to information and links to organizations fighting these threats.
