Observing human evolution through a modern lens certainly is a complex and difficult task not for the faint of heart of weak of mind it seems. As someone who exists way outside of the bioscience sphere I don’t often find myself considering concepts like the genesplicing CRISPR-Cas9 we read about in this week’s article “Taming the New Frontiers of Gene Editing,” or what biological impacts things like climate change and our modern world are really having on us. I enjoyed looking into it this week but can happily say I’d prefer to study human evolution of the past, if only so I don’t have to ponder all the possibilities for the future of the human race.

As I said before, I don’t do research in fields like biology hardly ever so I had no idea that CRISPR-Cas9 was even a thing. With the development of such ground breaking technology there will always be pros and cons but I can’t help but feel like the weights on this scale of possibility are particularly heavy. On one hand, editing genes in such a way can save thousands of lives and improve life as we know it, from something as small as making a cute pet pig exactly the way you want him, to abolishing genetic disorders. In this week’s article, it explained how genes could be altered to make humans more efficient, stronger, and more fit, like actual living Captain Americas. Obviously, these are all good things. CRISPR-Cas9 allows for human evolution to happen immediately. As Antonio Regaldo of MIT Technology Review points out: “Evolution is no longer gradual or subject to change. It is immediate and under human control.” Which, to me, sounds as terrifying as it does revolutionary.

As anyone who watches superhero movies or reads comic books knows, human experiments done with good intentions always end up being used for evil (Captain America was great but his super serum also resulted in Red Skull who was really not). While I am well aware real life is not a movie, I’m also aware that these villain archetypes reflect human behavior. This kind of technology could be used for terrible acts of war or terrorism but it could also have unintentional and unforeseen consequences as well. Since gene editing will have effects on generations whom these edited genes will be passed to, it is hard to know what long term detrimental issues could result. I agree with the article which ends on a note that policies and laws need to be made for use of CRISPR-Cas9, specifically and especially on humans. Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and Biosciences at Stanford University, highlights these issues well saying, “…there’s an ethical dilemma in making decisions that affect future generations…everything we do affects future generations.”

While pondering Greely’s words, I can’t help but think about climate change as well. One thing we learned in this course was that drastic changes in climate have monumental effects on human evolution. Some species were suited to live in Ice Ages, some were not, just as some were suited to adapt post-Ice Age to warmer weather, and others were not. I think the rapidly changing climate of the world will affect the human genome many years down the road. I can only hope that whatever humans decide to do in the present, a brighter future lay ahead.