WND | Tom Horn, a Christian author, filmmaker and researcher, expressed his concerns about “transhumanism” and the latest advances in gene editing to WND late last year.
“It holds great promise in new disease therapies but immeasurable
peril due to its capacity to make germline genetic modifications, which
would be passed on to all future generations, not to mention planned
extinctions through gene-drive technology which is already past ‘proof
of concept,'” said the co-author of “Pandemonium’s Engine.”
WND reported in November
on plans by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
dubbed DARPA, to develop a cleanup crew for engineered genes deemed
harmful to the eco-system.
The initiative is called “Safe Genes” – a program designed to
counteract gene-drive systems currently being developed to override the
standard rules of gene inheritance and natural selection. The danger,
scientists recognize, is that without a backup plan, a gene drive
released into nature could spread or change in unexpected ways with
potentially disastrous effects.
Kevin Esvelt, head of the Sculpting Evolution lab at MIT Media Lab,
which is applying for Safe Genes funding in collaboration with eight
other research groups, predicts that eventually an accident will allow a
drive with potential to spread globally to escape laboratory controls.
“It’s not going to be bioterror,” he told Scientific American, “it’s going to be ‘bioerror.'” Fist tap Big Don.
