Yesterday (Friday, Mar 20, 2015) one of the top reports in the front page of New York Times is
Nicholas Wade, Scientists Seek Ban on Methods of Editing the Human Genome; A potential to cure diseases or promote desired traits.
(1) The report discuss a method called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats). You do not even need to know what it means for now.
(2) Upon reading the title, I was puzzled.
(3) IF the methodology is so wonderful, why will anyone ban it? (Besides, CAN anyone ban it?)
(4) I browse the report today--browse, not read, because I was skeptical.
(5) I mean, half a century ago, before the invention of sequencing protein (first) and DNA (later), it was demonstrated that sickle cell anemia has change of a single--just one--amino acid in the beta chain of hemoglobin.
While at MIT, my German colleague--both of us were postdocs--told me that our boss made the discovery, for which MIT recruited him from Europe as a (very) young professor (directly, without going through tenure track--assistant and associate professorship). (My German friend said MIT had speculated he might one day got a Nobel prize.) Alas, the professor was a one-trick pony, making no more significant discovery. See Vernon Ingram
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Ingram
The revelation was surprising. Because my boss did not think much of me ("Think," he often exhorted me, but not to others, including students.) And vice versa. (But at least occasionally I can delude myself by imagining having come from a blue-blood line of researchers.)
(6) For such a simple mutation, nobody has figured out a way to correct it.
(7) And today I read journals and Wikipedia (yes, that too). It is ridiculous to say there is a breakthrough. Far from it. The NYT report features these scientists who trumpeted the methodology and then want to ban it --for being so marvelous a tool. Well these scientists are all PhDs. And there is a reason why every government on earth wants to promote the notion of physician-scientists (MD alone, or MD/PhD). It is fair to say physicians are not easy to get carried away, seeing patients every day whom they (physicians) may not be able to help.