foreignaffairs | Today, more people are living healthy, productive lives than ever
before. This good news may come as a surprise, but there is plenty of
evidence for it. Since the early 1990s, global child mortality has been cut in half. There have been massive reductions in cases of tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS.
The incidence of polio has decreased by 99 percent, bringing the world
to the verge of eradicating a major infectious disease, a feat humanity
has accomplished only once before, with smallpox. The proportion of the
world’s population in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as
living on less than $1.90 per day, has fallen from 35 percent to about
11 percent.
Continued progress is not inevitable,
however, and a great deal of unnecessary suffering and inequity remains.
By the end of this year, five million children under the age of five
will have died—mostly in poor countries and mostly from preventable
causes. Hundreds of millions of other children will continue to suffer
needlessly from diseases and malnutrition that can cause lifelong
cognitive and physical disabilities. And more than 750 million
people—mostly rural farm families in sub-Saharan Africa and South
Asia—still live in extreme poverty, according to World Bank estimates. The women and girls among them, in particular, are denied economic opportunity.
Some
of the remaining suffering can be eased by continuing to fund the
development assistance programs and multilateral partnerships that are
known to work. These efforts can help sustain progress, especially as
the world gets better at using data to help guide the allocation of
resources. But ultimately, eliminating the most persistent diseases and
causes of poverty will require scientific discovery and technological
innovations.
That includes CRISPR and other
technologies for targeted gene editing. Over the next decade, gene
editing could help humanity overcome some of the biggest and most
persistent challenges in global health
and development. The technology is making it much easier for scientists
to discover better diagnostics, treatments, and other tools to fight
diseases that still kill and disable millions of people every year,
primarily the poor. It is also accelerating research that could help end
extreme poverty by enabling millions of farmers in the developing world
to grow crops and raise livestock that are more productive, more
nutritious, and hardier. New technologies are often met with skepticism.
But if the world is to continue the remarkable progress of the past few
decades, it is vital that scientists, subject to safety and ethics
guidelines, be encouraged to continue taking advantage of such promising
tools as CRISPR.
