Introduction
Imagine a world without disease; no cancer, no zika fever, and no malaria. Just a decade ago, there was not a way to effectively eradicate these and other harmful diseases from the human population. There were many advances in treatment but no real solution to stopping infections, until now. There are still some limitations, but there have been huge advances in technology that make it possible to start combating these diseases. Humans have been trying to alter and control the organisms that we interact with for thousands of years by selectively breeding naturally-occurring variations of crop plants. Whatever variation we preferred, we would choose those plants or animals to reproduce, passing on those favored characteristics. Now we do not have to be limited by what nature presents us. We can even select characteristics that we desire that come from different species. These new technologies offer huge promise of creating stronger, more disease-resistant crops, eliminating genetic diseases like Huntington’s, cancer, deafness, and stopping mosquito borne illnesses, like malaria, dengue fever and zika fever.1 What are the ethical and moral implications of using these new technologies, and how will these genetic modifications affect the course of evolution on populations in the future?
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