BENEFIT OR BANE? - As technological breakthroughs accelerate, engineers will need to address the ethics and potential risks of their creations

摘要

Rarely do scientists seek limits on the use of technologies that they invented. Yet Jennifer Doudna told a journalist that her technology needed to be put on hold pending a broader societal discussion of its scientific and ethical issues. This was CRISPR-Cas9, a bacterial system for engineering genomes that her team at the University of California, Berkeley had developed. In an essay in the December issue of Nature, Doudna said she would lie awake at night wondering whether she should stay out of the ethical storm that was brewing around it.