RE: Use CRISPR to heal illnesses, not social problems
I am concerned about the idea to use it to modify mosquitos to not carry certain diseases like malaria. Like, maybe it would work and we'd be rid of malaria and hooray! But it's a really new technology and there is no going back once you've released a modified organism into the wild like that - especially with how fast it would take over in mosquito populations. If something goes wrong, it could damage the whole ecosysyem (even more than we already have). Ntm, I just saw a report about - I'm liable to misspell this - encephalopy? - the disease everyone has been freaking out about pregnant women getting bit by a mosquito carrying it because it deforms a baby's brain - can possibly cure cancer. They are looking into giving it to cancer patients on purpose, because unless you're pregnant, it's a mild thing and it could kill cancer. What if we had desteoyed it already via the crispr mosquitos? There are just so many unknown variables.
That's some very valid concerns. There are so many factors to take into consideration, both known as well as unknown. Like you say, we could end up curing an illness which in the future might be the cure for something else.
This just shows how important it is to have ethics boards steering the development and implementation of these tools, even if such boards might not see these consequences before it's too late.
I'm hoping that we'll do more good that bad with this technology. It has such a great potential, unfortunately both negative and positive.