Hacking the Code of Life

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Just 45 years ago, the age of gene modification was born. Researchers could create glow-in-the-dark mice, farmyard animals producing drugs in their milk, and vitamin-enhanced rice that could prevent half a million people going blind every year.

But now GM is rapidly being supplanted by a new system called CRISPR or gene editing. Using this approach, scientists can manipulate the genes of almost any organism with a degree of precision, ease and speed that we could only dream of ten years ago.

But is it ethical to change the genetic material of organisms in a way that might be passed on to future generations? If a person is suffering from a lethal genetic disease, is it even more unethical to deny them this option? Who controls the application of this technology, when it makes biohacking perhaps of ones own genome a real possibility?

Nessa Careys book is a thrilling and timely snapshot of a technology that will radically alter our futures.