A parking area for Nobel Prize Winners
I have been to Berkeley, California in January 2023. I was deeply shocked to see that one of the departmental buildings had a separate parking area for Nobel Prize Winners from that department.
There are countries being proud of their scientists and writers when they received the Nobel Prize. Berkeley had a separate parking area for them. And it was only for one departmental building.
In short, I was mesmerized. One of the pictures in that parking area was of Jennifer A. Doudna. I knew her and the CRISPR technology back then, but I hadn’t read in detail.
I was privileged that my guide in the university knew Jennifer personally, and explained some of the private conversations that they had.
Recently, out of my curiosity, I started reading her work. For the introduction level, I would suggest “A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution”.
Let me share with you why I had developed a curiosity for this field. During recent times, I try to focus on future technological waves instead of the current ones. The most dominant current one is AI. It is deeply important, no question about that. But let’s try to see the future waves, to create them or take the relevant position to jump on them.
CRISPR is definitely one of the future waves. Interestingly, Jennifer also considers it literally as a “future wave”, creating an analogy that she is taking her surfboard to begin riding on it.
More on CRISPR later on. However, one idea is crucial.
Having gene editing and using this “superpower” can be easily considered as unethical.
It also triggers some religious concepts too, for sure.
But, in the future, one day, we can consider not using gene editing unethical.
CRISPR gives the possibility to consider genes as a form of codes, and manipulate them to create different formations.
This gives the possibility of triggering and managing a human controlled evolution process.
And this can be an addition to the idea formulation of David Deutsch, the beginning of the infinity.
