Editing Bodies: What Could Go Wrong?
The biggest problem with space travel is not xenomorphs or the fact that humans can’t build ships with warp drives, but that space is just a nightmare for human bodies. There’s no air. There’s no gravity. And it’s constantly showered in deadly radiation. Some science fiction solves these problems by pretending they don’t exist (see Wars, Star). Other sci-fi assumes humans will reshape their bodies to handle it better. Like “The Water Knife,” give or take a few decades, that day isn’t so far off.
That’s the premise of a new book by Dr. Christopher E. Mason of Weill Cornell Medicine. In an interview with Adam Minter, Mason says humans could edit their own genes to handle radiation and other space horrors (though maybe not xenomorphs) to help them colonize Mars and beyond.
It won’t happen tomorrow. For one thing, the technology is still too new. But it’s getting there: Intellia Therapeutics and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals this weekend released promising human-trial data for Crispr gene-editing tech. Sam Fazeli writes the results suggest we can safely target specific genes for zapping, which would be a huge breakthrough for fighting diseases. It’s also maybe a huge Slip ’N Slide to ethical dead zones — real “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could” kind of stuff. But maybe also another step on the way to the stars.
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