Frankenstein of modern times?

Written by Nicolas Guignard

In August 1939, physicist Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt which prompted his decision to launch the Manhattan project. Six years later, upon the explosion of the first ever atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Humans had opened the pandora box, freed the formidable energy contained in the core of tiny particles. World War 2 ended as humanity entered the atomic era, for the better and for the worse.

Einstein later said he regretted writing the letter to FDR, and Szilard (an important contributor to the Manhattan project) wrote “my trial as a war criminal” in which he accused himself of crimes against humanity. Even Oppenheimer later became a martyr to McCarthyism for his opposition to the development of hydrogen bombs.

This example illustrates how scientific innovation can be used by countries and their militaries for uses that scientists did not foresee. Einstein thought the bomb should be developed only because Nazi Germany had a similar program, and Oppenheimer believed all uranium should be owned by a UN agency which would prevent a nuclear arms race but foster a civil use of nuclear energy.

On October 7th, 2020, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to French biologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna for their discovery of Cispr-Cas9. Those ‘molecular scissors’ are a powerful tool which enables us to edit a living organism’s DNA.

This is the dawn of a huge scientific revolution. Crops that repel certain insects, cows that produce more milk, and cure to most genetic diseases are only few of the applications Crispr-Cas9 will have. But this may also be the start of a more dystopian use of gene therapy.

In 2018, Chinese genetic researcher He Jiankui became a celebrity after he announced the birth of two babies genetically engineered to be HIV immune. While arguably a huge milestone in the fight against AIDS, He also opened the pandora box. With such technology, it is technically feasible to fully engineer a human being, from the colour of its eyes to its size and physical capabilities. Any country could breed soldiers with superhuman strength and a reduced exposition to pain and fatigue, while it is not hard to imagine a ‘Welcome to Gattaca’ like future where job applicants are chosen not for their abilities but for their gene pool (with only the wealthiest able to afford gene therapy of course).

Nuclear fission brought the world both a ‘clean’, cheap and very safe source of energy and the deadliest devices in human history. Crispr-Cas9 might prove a double-edged sword as well, providing a cure to many diseases but also the possibility that such a tool be used for more noxious purposes.

Like many inventions ranging from dynamite to atomic fission, from pesticides to CDOs, Crispr-Cas9 most likely will be used in a variety of ways, for the better and for the worse.

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