Hacking the Code of Life: How gene editing will rewrite our futures Audiobook (Free)

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

But now GM is rapidly getting supplanted by a new system called CRISPR or ‘gene editing and enhancing’. Using this approach, researchers can manipulate the genes of nearly every organism using a degree of accuracy, ease and acceleration that we could only dream of ten years ago.

But could it be ethical to improve the genetic materials of organisms in a manner that might be passed on to future years? If one is experiencing a lethal genetic disease, is it a lot more unethical to deny them this program? Who controls the application of this technology, when it creates ‘biohacking’—probably of one’s very own genome—a genuine possibility?

Nessa Carey’s publication is a thrilling and timely snapshot of a technology which will radically alter our futures.