Unnatural Selection (2019) s01e03 Episode Script

1 So, where were we? I know we stopped in, like, the middle of chapter two.
"Her daemon's name was Pantalaimon, and he was currently in the form of a moth, then cat, snake, rat, fox, bird, wolf, cheetah, lizard, polecat, porcupine.
After a moment or two, the daemon flicked from shape to shape more quickly than Emma had ever seen a daemon change before.
" Um, wait, wait, wait.
So her daemon is a is like a moth or something.
That does not seem very useful.
So, her daemon can change forms whenever he wants.
Oh! Yeah, so he's just a moth right now 'cause it's sneaky.
What would my daemon be? I don't know.
Mine would probably be, like, a magpie.
- 26,000 views.
It's crazy.
- There we go.
This is bigger than HIV, right? This is about people being able to control their own genome.
So far, all right, nothing is red - or irritated.
- People will know the results one way or another.
You'll be able to update us? - Correct.
- Right.
I'm surprised to see Aaron there because he he should not be there.
That's not smart.
Um He should, um It should just be Tristan.
Like, this should be about Tristan.
Through our company, we take these to manufacturing, and we are finding a way to deliver it.
My understanding of it was this is what Tristan wants to do, and Aaron's trying to reframe it as being about Ascendance.
That's first of all, a stupid mistake, legally.
But also, it it reframes the whole thing ethically too.
We are taking, you know, what has been so effective He's blowing it way out of proportion.
He's pushing these things as cures when they we don't even know if it's gonna work.
Our timeline is to have this available by January 1st.
With or without the consent of the the state.
He shouldn't be selling it yet.
It's not ready.
You'll see more of that from us and more of that - from our company itself.
- The entire biohacking community.
Right? Like, it's not just us.
We are just one part of a wave that is about to crash onto society.
So, you can either ride with the wave or try to adopt a resistance to it, - but it's coming.
- Yeah.
I should've been more skeptical.
I mean, he hasn't harmed anyone yet.
Uh, though I don't think he's unwilling to risk it.
And I'm concerned about that.
We're on the verge of a technological breakthrough that could change the future of mankind.
Most people have no idea how rapidly things are changing.
We're now changing the DNA, the code of life.
It's amazing, the sorts of things that we could do with this.
The question is, should we? What happens if diseases were just eradicated? All technology is inherently about changing away from what is natural.
Have you ever thought about how inefficient it all is? Like, trees having to grow up? It's purely in competition with other trees, right? There's no actual need for it, in terms of photosynthetic efficiency.
Like, there's a reason why a sheet of solar panels is just a sheet of solar panels.
It doesn't You don't need to put them on towers.
It's competition with other trees.
It's that dog-eat-dog aspect of nature that forces trees to grow up.
I mean, if only things could cooperate.
But how do you determine with whom to trust enough to cooperate? I first got into evolution because it's the fastest way to change the world at least, in science.
So, to everyone who knew anything about genome engineering, CRISPR was the starting gun.
CRISPR has become the tool for biologists, regardless of organism they're working with, because it does seem to work in every organism and lets you edit just about any gene.
Sometime around then, I was walking through the Emerald Necklace here in Boston, this beautiful stream and surrounding forest looking at all the living things.
There were some ducks and some ducklings.
Then, at some point, I realized, "Wait a minute.
What if you program an organism to do genome editing on its own? What if you insert a CRISPR system into it?" That is, encode the instructions for how to do the editing along with the gene we want to replace, and it all went into the genome as one piece.
Then, the real magic happens when that organism mates with a wild organism, not engineered.
Because then, in the offspring, editing would happen again.
And all of its offspring would be guaranteed to inherit the change.
And the process would happen again and again and again.
So, this is called a CRISPR-based gene-drive system, a system capable of copying itself by genome editing in the wild and very possibly spreading through every population of that species everywhere in the world.
So, this was a striking realization.
It has tremendous promise for doing good in the world.
It also means that we have a problem.
In an organism like a mosquito, um, gene drive could be very good, right? As a way of, um, making, uh, mosquitoes unable to pass on all sorts of dreaded diseases that we've been trying for decades, if not longer, to eradicate.
Gene drive is a new and risky genetic-engineering technology where the goal is to drive a single trait through a population, through a species, for all generations to come.
What you're saying is, "I'm not just going to engineer this single organism.
As a result, I'm gonna engineer an entire population, and thereby, an entire ecosystem.
" Um, that's an immense amount of power.
And the implications of being able to do that, if you can do that, are huge.
To me, it's the most high-leverage technology I've seen, after, maybe, nuclear power.
For example, you might try to drive a lethal trait through a species to make them extinct.
Ultimately, you could describe it as an extinction technology.
So, what what are the implications of an ecosystem that has its mosquito population, or at least one species of its mosquito population, crash? Uh, we we don't know the answer to that question.
How much do we have to know before we jump off that cliff? In the end, this is on my shoulders.
It was on me to decide to share this with the world, for good or for ill.
Yes, there's abundant reason for caution and humility.
But we also need to remember that the problems that we're trying to solve are real problems today.
In the last three minutes, malaria has infected 1,000 people.
And two of those are going to die.
Leonce Leonce? How are you? Where did she say it hurt this morning? - She was vomiting.
- Mmm.
- And she couldn't sleep.
- Mmm.
Your hand.
I will come again later this afternoon to give her another treatment.
Mm-hmm.
How many months have you been pregnant? Almost three months.
- Yeah? - Mm-hmm.
That's it.
Hmm? The results show you have malaria.
So, how do people get malaria? Mm Mmm - Don't be shy.
- Isn't it bad food? - Mmm? - Isn't it from bad food? It's mosquitoes that give malaria.
Malaria is very dangerous for pregnant women.
It attacks your pregnancy.
Do you know what a mosquito net is? Huh? I used to sleep in a mosquito net, - Mm-hmm.
- but one side was torn, and we took it down.
We'll find a mosquito net for you.
Every day you must sleep in a mosquito net.
Do you understand? I will prescribe some malaria medicines.
You'll take them, you understand? God willing, you'll recover.
In the village here, at minimum, people will contract malaria once a year.
Children are especially at risk.
At least twice a year, they'll contract malaria.
So, if I was to attack one disease, it's the first disease I would attack.
Give me the chalk.
Do the exercise.
As Africans, we are really living the huge burden of malaria, and this has been for centuries and centuries.
I'm done.
Give me five then.
Very good.
I lived it when I was a kid, I'm living it as a scientist today, and I'm living it as a father.
I can still remember seeing myself laying down on the floor.
I think I was probably around two or three years old, and it was really, really tough, sweating.
And fortunately, really, for me, we had a very good doctor at that time in my village.
If I would not have that, I'm really not sure I would have made it, you know, today.
Étienne, dinner.
Come and eat.
All my brothers and sisters, they have all been through malaria.
I don't even know a single person who was born here and has never experienced malaria.
I just don't know any single person.
These are mosquitoes that are locally collected here in Burkina Faso.
This is the DNA of mosquito that has been amplified yesterday.
From the reading, uh, this is the kind of picture that you will get.
If you look at the genome of the mosquitoes and you look at the profile, you have the mutation, making that the insecticide cannot bind anymore.
These mosquitoes is adapting to the changing environment.
It has a kind of plasticity in its genome, making it really very difficult for insecticide to be efficient.
Unfortunately, the resistance just jumped.
Conventional tools have really reached their protective limit.
If we don't have new tools, just forget it.
We will not be able to eliminate malaria.
This is the painting that shows the Roman Campagna in, uh, probably in 1840, 1845.
But, as you can see, there is no houses there.
Because people didn't want to live there.
It was all swamps.
Malaria affected Italy for for centuries.
And they didn't even know the cause of the disease.
Ever since Grassi, in Italy, and Ross, in India, proved in 1898 that certain mosquitoes carried malaria, mosquitoes have been under attack in most of the regions of the world.
There is no malaria without mosquito.
It's very simple.
We have eliminated malaria from Europe thanks to the insecticides.
Eradication using the insecticide DD All water surfaces were sprayed to kill larvae.
However, you need to sustain this effort over a long, long period of time.
You need a lot of, uh, support.
You need a lot of money.
You need political stability.
It's a bit sad to say, but you need a technology that overcomes human nature.
Now, in the lab, we have gene-drive mosquitoes that are very, very promising.
Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet, responsible for millions of deaths every year.
Not only malaria, there are many, many diseases transmitted by mosquitoes.
Just, yeah, look at them, they are look like from a different world.
They look a bit aliens.
But they are very terrestrial.
We inject CRISPR that we engineered in the lab in a specific location in the embryo that will develop into the sexual organs of the mosquito.
Once you get your first transgenic mosquito, it's kind of amazing.
This is the brain, the optical nerve, and and the eyes.
The gene drive will be fluorescent, and the non-gene drive will be without the fluorescence.
You can clearly see which one have been modified and which ones are not.
Gene drive can generate mosquitoes that produce only males, and this is very important for two reasons.
One is that males don't bite, and they don't transmit a disease.
And the second one, you will have more and more males and less and less females to the point that the population will crash.
At the beginning, we looked at this technology with a with a healthy skepticism.
Personally, I think a scientist has to be skeptical.
We can mimic environmental condition in the tropics.
Let's say a particular location in Burkina Faso, in Africa, or Angola.
We can reproduce, very, very precisely, temperature, humidity, light cycle.
This allow us to predict what will happen when these mosquito are released.
Now, I must say, I'm, uh I'm convinced that the technology works.
I'm not dead yet, but I also don't know if it's worked yet.
So, the title of this is "Experimental Data Revealing for the N6 HIV Genetic Plasma Therapy.
" All right, this is up.
I got all the data.
Um Uh Yeah, my viral load went up.
So, all right.
Yeah, this was not what we were hoping for, right? But it's very rare that a therapy that's new works the first time.
I'm pretty sure we just used too small of a dose.
We did a very, very small dose.
I mean, this was 1/100th of what we had available in December.
We all wanted to be absolutely careful to ensure that the minimal effective dose - Mm-hmm.
- You know.
The future doses, um will have about 50 to 100 times, I believe We're developing something that we believe will be both, uh, more potent, but also it will last longer within the human body.
Um, but I am glad that with the general Yeah, the proof of concept We didn't We didn't kill anybody.
What Tristan experimented with in phase one is approximately 250 to 500 times lower in potency than what he will experiment with next Saturday.
We've got N6 going right now, the actual production run.
Should be ready to be purified in the next couple days.
HIV is a very sneaky, and pernicious, and quickly evolving, uh, virus.
That said, we think we can respond back to HIV.
It It's a living entity.
It's gonna throw us some more curveballs as it always has in the past, um, but the fight's not over just because we lost the first round.
You know, we're not giving up.
If everything goes according to plan, and it will, then we will have all the data that we need to show that we've developed treatments.
Then we're moving forward at a lightning pace.
You're listening to Radiolab.
This is Radiolab.
Kevin Esvelt, he is a scientist who's talking to our producers about a gene-editing technology that that can reshape life, actually.
I'm Kevin Esvelt.
- Esvelt.
- He's very svelte.
I think of myself as an evolutionary engineer.
And Kevin has his idea, which is to use CRISPR to create something called Gene drive.
Gene drive.
Let's say that you want to change a gene inside the mosquitoes.
- That'd be great.
- A great thing, 'cause malaria is a bad thing.
With gene drive, that gene does the work on its own, on autopilot.
You're putting, like, a spare scissors or something? And then that baby passes the scissors to the next baby, - snip, snip, snip - Yup.
And it is like a chain reaction? - Yeah.
- Dude.
Things are moving very fast.
Uh, what kinds of things? So, we might be able to use gene drive to remove rats in New Zealand.
Wait, what? When I first heard of gene drive, it was actually a bit worrying, 'cause it's it's at a scale of molecular editing that we haven't even seen before.
But the threat we're facing is so incredibly aggressive.
It's the stuff of nightmares.
New Zealand's preparing for a rat population explosion of biblical proportions.
Warm weather has created ideal breeding conditions for forest predators.
Predators like this kill 25 million native birds a year, and these vulnerable species are at even greater threat because the vermin population is about to explode.
The US military is enlisting six million dollars in research into gene technology to control the spread of rats.
Researchers want to use our islands for the study, which would see rat DNA edited to control breeding.
New Zealand was one of the last places in the world colonized by people.
Since humans have arrived, nearly half of New Zealand land bird species have gone extinct.
Birds like this were the rulers of the land.
They didn't have any, uh, need to learn how to evade furry mammals.
When humans brought these rats and other predators, they just made a meal out of all of these birds who had no evolutionary adaptation.
The choice is either to have birds like this or to have rats like this.
It's one or the other.
There's no equilibrium.
If we make active choices, we can steer the world in a particular direction that we might want it to go in.
And otherwise, we just end up with a a world overrun by rats.
We are here today to ask for your guidance in whether you believe it is useful to even consider these potential methods to protect the native species' ecosystems by painlessly removing these invasive predators.
And the overall, this kind of phenomenon is called gene drive.
The goal of this would be to remove all of the rats.
So, yes, it involves engineering the rats, but the goal is to have all the rats go away, and so there would be no engineered genes left, - if this is successful.
- Um You remove a rat from the ecosystem, what takes its place? You're making room for something else, and then here we go again, the humans saying, "Well, we'll play God today, and bugger the consequences.
" We have enough problems in the world.
It's frightening what you can do to alter, um, God's creation.
You cannot question, compromise, with spirit.
I cannot say how that will affect the spirit of the animal.
I cannot say how will it affect the spirit of the environment, but evolution is a game of numbers.
And that is something that we can measure.
Every day that we don't do anything, there is one indigenous bird going by the wayside.
We can't just sit here and say, "Oh no, we're not gonna try that.
" We've been using poison for the last 50, 60 years.
- And it's not working.
- No, it's not.
- Nothing we're doing is working.
- So let's be honest about that and say, "Look, we're gonna be open to look at other ways.
" Yes.
Ecologically, in terms of sustainably, the world is broken.
We have broken it.
Is it Is it our place to try to fix it? God made an order.
And Noah he did have two rats on that ark.
We have no right to try and eradicate one of those species unless we want to pay a severe price.
I speak for me.
I wouldn't dare try to do that.
The challenge is that explaining how things are to people, according to science, has no effect on their actual opinions because their opinions about the world are not shaped by their grasp of facts.
They're shaped by their values.
If you're really playing God, you don't care what other people think.
So, we're gonna do just the opposite.
We want to learn all of those reasons why they think it is a terrible idea.
Ah, ya, ya, ya the government planning to get rid of all the rats in New Zealand.
In fact, the prime minister says, all going well, there will be no rats, stoats, or possums anywhere in New Zealand by 2050.
Bombs to set the world on fire Suffering in the land Going back to the '70s with that number, "Sufferin' in the Land.
" We've got a special guest in the studio, Bryce Smith.
Uh, we're talking about a big topic.
It's genetic engineering.
The government want to get rid of all pests by 2050 and may be using what they call a "gene drive.
" I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I personally don't think we should be doing that.
This type of technology has the ability to change our way of life significantly, and there are a lot of, um issues around it, for us as people of the land, on how we're going to deal with it.
And I suppose, the thing about this, I mean, where's it going to end? I mean, we might talk about this as a way of getting rid of the pests, but I mean, the long-term ramifications of this type of thing.
We need to consider, if they can do that to that, then the same tool can be used on other animals.
At the moment, they've got tools there to create, um, sterile possums.
What other tools are gonna be needed to create sterile humans? You know, our elders never got excited about technology manipulating our Maori world.
There's one here for you.
There's a couple more here.
Can I have that knife? Yep.
Okay.
This is a native breed of taro.
You can just slice them up and cook them as they are like a potato.
Some of the old people use it to make bread.
You can grate them.
And this particular patch here has been here for about six or seven generations, from what we know of.
This particular plant needs a moist piece of land.
You can look at the soil here.
It's years and years of, um, of black mud and if you smell it, it's, uh may not be appealing to smell, but it needs to have that smell because in that in that smell is the food.
My father was a a great supporter of our natural whakapapa.
Another nice little one.
Um, whakapapa isn't an easy word to understand.
It's a relationship that sustains one another.
Two parties or three parties in this particular environment here, you're gonna be at 18 different parties working together.
One is creating an environment for the other one to live happily.
One of the critical points is to be sure that you know exactly what's going to happen when you make changes.
And be very, very careful when you don't have all the information.
When we talk about conserving these birds, we're not just talking about it for their charisma or for the aesthetic value they have.
These are important parts of the ecosystem.
They pollinate plants, they regulate invertebrate communities.
If we have too many of these species go extinct, it could just unravel the ecosystem.
Just, it's it's a duty, it's a job to have to remove these rats in the entirety of the country.
So we're looking at a map here, at the Eastern Bay of Islands.
It's a collection of islands here that they eradicated rats from in 2009 with toxins and aerial rat poison.
But there's a constant pressure of rats swimming out to the island group.
Got four rats on the loose at the moment.
We're just not sure where these rats are.
They could be running anywhere.
So it's all hands on deck trying to get hold of these rats using detection dogs and tracking devices and traps.
You said you've got four on the run at the moment? Four animals on the loose at the moment across four separate islands.
So they come swimming, and they come on people's boats.
You really only have to miss one.
If you miss a pregnant female, you go from one rat to, "Holy crap, we're in trouble.
" Can see their little, um, footprints there and also where they've been dragging their tail along.
When you've got a species that can breed that quickly, one rat can devastate our environment.
It's an incredible challenge.
The effort that it takes to catch one rat is just not sustainable over the long term.
So if we're serious of actually making the whole of New Zealand pest-free, we've gotta come up with new stuff.
It's the 21st century.
We've put men on the moon.
Surely we can manage this.
It sucks to have to kill something to save something else, but we're well past the situation where we can leave nature to be.
The impact of humans is well beyond that where you can say, "Let's just lock it away in preservation in a national park," and expect it to be protected.
Invasive species are reaching the furthest corner of the planet.
That's why I support eradication so much, even though in one instance, it's killing everything at once, which sounds horrific.
It's done.
And after it's done, the killing stops.
And the birds come back, and the life comes back.
Come on, ladies.
- Great.
That's a good photo.
Yeah.
- Real good.
Here, over here, look.
It's always been my favorite place to come, and you just feel at rest when you come up here and just watch over the harbor.
And so, that's what I really like about coming here.
I think of my ancestors, and this is what they left behind.
They protected it so that it could be left behind like this.
All my role is today is to continue doing what they did.
Do scientists really believe they can control the environment? Do they really believe they can control this? Do they really believe that they can manage this? Today, we have some incredible talks, debates, and a three-day celebration of human enhancement, transhumanism, and biohacking.
Oh, wow.
Oh my God.
I have to take a video.
I have to take a video.
Hello, I'm Aaron Traywick.
We represent Ascendance Biomedical.
We're a small group of people scattered around the world with a lot of talent, developing gene therapy applications.
You have likely heard of us from, um our work in live testing the first gene-therapy cure for HIV.
It's really interesting, but when we think about HIV, we think also something similar to what happens with flu.
Each year it's gonna mutate, and HIV mutates really fast.
Of course.
So, the, uh, the solution there is to study the presence of the N6 antibody in the body, and ensure that it is staying at peak concentrations.
The only way to do that is with blood samples, and that will be done on a weekly, ongoing basis for the next six months with Tristan Roberts, following phase two.
And we'll make sure that raw human data is available as quickly as possible.
Richter, guard! Good boy! Good boy! Walk with the line? Swing.
Do it again.
There we go.
When you're fighting a living organism, uh, you've gotta you've gotta factor in evolution.
You've gotta factor in the fact that it's gonna fight back.
In a case like Tristan's, the key thing to rememberis that his his infection is alive.
You know, it's a living, evolving organism inside his body.
So, if you if you hit it with something that will wipe it out, then you've you've stopped it.
But if you hit it with something that just challenges it, it'll adapt.
And you challenge it a little more and challenge it a little more, and you keep sort of piecemealing your way towards a cure.
You may get lots of useful information, but the cost may be that when you finally find a a functional cure for HIV, Tristan's not a candidate for it anymore.
You know, real biology takes time and effort.
Aaron's problem is he wants it to be now, regardless of whether it's finished.
All right, so, you're of the opinion that there's a good chance of a resistance developing.
Um There's risk every time.
So, did Was it your version of the N6 that was sent to the lab? The first version, yes.
Okay.
But I wanted to talk to you a little bit.
Who's, like, adding transfection reagents and measuring, and all that stuff, and doing all that? I I don't know, actually.
Okay, so, somebody needs to measure it, and do the math, and get it at the right concentrations.
At the wrong concentrations, either it won't transfect, or it'll be cytotoxic.
That is concerning.
It's like, I wanna help you do what you wanna do.
- Yeah.
- Um But you've gotta be really, really careful with something like that.
There's no reason to push this timetable.
Mmm.
From From where I'm looking at it, it's your experiment, right? So, Ascendance has to accept that that one of two things is true: Either you're Tristan doing the experiment, in charge of what you're doing, because this is a self-experiment and Ascendance is just trying to facilitate you, or you're their human test subject, and that's deception.
Genetic modification is a new topic for a lot of people so if you're doing this kind of work, you have to engage with the community.
We cannot just go there to the village and then start working.
We have to explain what we are doing so that the community can understand, and so this is really a very big challenge.
Hello.
Hello, hello.
Please clap your hands for the people of Target Malaria project.
They are working on mosquitoes.
Working on mosquitoes? How is that possible? Their work is simple.
They catch mosquitoes.
After they catch the mosquitoes, where do they take them? They call it a laboratory.
Ah, laboratory.
The technologies are quite complex, so it's not easy for everybody to understand the specific detail of what you're doing.
We are a kind of small country, but we have about 60 dialect.
Some of these scientific word is not easy.
Isn't it malaria? Can you tell us what you see in the picture? - Mosquitoes.
- Mosquitoes.
Not to mention if you want to translate it from French to the local language.
If you look at the picture, the female's mouth is stretched.
It looks like a needle.
Yesterday morning they told me that my friend's son died from malaria.
Today, it's my own sister who's died from malaria.
Every day and night, mosquitoes are causing damage.
If we don't wake up, things will get worse! We can't let the mosquitoes keep killing us.
I have my rifle at home.
I'll kill all the mosquitoes.
I'm ready, let's go! I'll kill them all! This is Anopheles gambiae, the species that transmit the disease malaria.
You can see some of these mosquitoes are already blood fed.
This means that they have taken the blood meal, so they can fly around and transmit the disease.
This one is the male.
We genetically modify the male.
When it mates with a female Hmm.
they lay eggs.
- Eggs.
- Mosquito eggs.
But these eggs, they can't hatch.
Because you modified its thing.
This is what we are doing.
That's the type of mosquito we have in our laboratory.
This is what we're seeking permission for.
If the people of Bana give us permission, then we are going to release the mosquitoes here in Bana.
- I want to do it.
- I want to do it, too.
We must all be a part of it! You see everyone has raised their hands.
Do you all agree? We all agree.
We all agree.
Let's raise our hands! We have scientists going into communities, claiming that they have a solution for very grave problems.
But you can't base the consent of releasing a risky, genetically engineered organism into the wild based on one single community.
I think we need more, uh, to hear the voice of people living in endemic country where malaria is a problem.
The opinion of somebody that is sitting comfortably in a nice desk overlooking the bay of San Diego in Southern California, for me I mean, I respect it, but for me, it has a different weight than somebody in Africa.
These are genetically modified mosquitoes.
These have been brought, uh, from Italy.
I wouldn't sit here today and say that this technology is completely free of risk.
It's a new technology.
It has never been done.
But we are taking a phased approach.
We have compiled a dossier, and we have submitted it to the National Agency of Biosecurity.
So, not a single genetically modified mosquito is going to be released in the field if we are not confident about the concern that people have.
We're often told the story in the context of the best possible use.
Maybe you could genetically engineer a mosquito to not carry malaria.
But clearly, this is a very good vector for spreading bioweapons and for other offensive uses.
We should never assess a new technology just by its best possible use.
We have to assess it against all the ways it's gonna be used.
What is it doing beyond this thing that I see in front of me? What's it doing behind the scenes? DARPA.
DARPA takes on the most difficult technical challenges for the Department of Defense.
DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, seem to be putting millions upon millions of dollars into gene drives.
That's, frankly, terrifying.
And there's a range of other ways in which it could be used.
There is a patent on the idea of using gene drives in bees so that, uh, you could then control those bees, using light sources, to drive it to particular crops.
So, controlling pollination if if a company could do that, would be, uh, extremely powerful, and and they would use that in the marketplace.
The unexpected mutations and the unintended consequences have profound and dangerous impacts on our environment.
It is irresponsible for a small group of scientists to be making decisions on behalf of the entire planet.
People may think that it's wrong to, uh to play God with environment, which is very respectable.
But this is a different conversation.
This is a conversation on value.
You have to have a hierarchy of value.
In everything.
Otherwise, you cannot distinguish what is good and what is bad.
I think it's the keystone of morality.
You have to have a hierarchy of value.
You can't put all the value on the same level.
So what is at the top Life is on top of it.
Social stability is on top of it.
Progress, well-being.
Malaria is a disease of poverty and social instability.
My objective is to solve a great health problem, so everybody will benefit, irrespective of their social condition or their beliefs or their income.
We are no different from any other species.
I mean, species compete with each other.
We are competing with mosquitoes.
We need to win.
To the speaking mountains To the echoing cliffs That flow to the sea Call us Call us Call us I acknowledge you Who spoke of the celestial knowledge Knowledge of the heavens And the terrestrial knowledge Earthly knowledge And the prayers you delivered Will be heard day and night Stand like the kahikatea tree To brave the storm Embrace and receive each other We are one together Every scientist that's spoken to us, and I've got a good 30-year experience, not one has ever provided an antidote or a formula to undo the mistake they usually end up with.
So, we will tell you what we think is possible.
Our best idea to date is a form of local gene drive that can stop and go away.
It can be made to be reversible and, in fact, it can be made to be reversible on its own.
Or at least, that's the idea.
We're currently working on the first one, and we're reasonably confident that it will likely work.
I can't promise that, but that's my best expectation.
You've come here wanting to talk about pest eradication, and yet, you yourself realize this is dangerous.
So I just wanted to stand and tell you to your face I cannot support you when I see, in actual fact, that your main supporter of finance is the Americans' war weapon company, DARPA.
Why are they spending all that many millions of dollars? The only sort of logical conclusion I could come to is that DARPA, the war weapons organization in the United States, is looking for biological warfare.
Is DARPA actually going to use that, use you? I personally am against that.
In terms of weapons, I refuse to do any work in secret.
And so, after some negotiations, they agreed, and that that was my unbreakable requirement, that I will accept military funding for this, to understand how these systems work, but only insofar as everything we do is in the open.
And I hold myself morally responsible for all of the consequences that will ensue.
You know, we've heard lots and lots of nice words from the colonizers over the over the millennia uh, that have proven to be hollow because underneath it is those hidden agendas.
In a sense, historically, you're a little bit like the missionary coming with a good story, but behind you is a whole lot of fellas with some rifles, you know? You understand what I'm saying? So, it's it's not just you personally we're talking about.
It's your ilk, as a whole, coming to this land.
That's what science does.
It creates urgency in our minds, and I'm not gonna be tricked by that.
Given the technology and the way it's racing down the train track, um, it would be advisable to look at the natural environment a bit longer, to make sure that we do need to intervene or not.
Thank you.
What do you do? Do you sit and do nothing or just talk about it? A lot of our cognate species are going extinct, and we don't even know.
What's been happening at the moment is quite alarming.
What kind of regulations have gotta be put in place to actually curb your enthusiasm for it? I don't have enthusiasm for gene What kind of regulations do we need? In my view, I think, as as a country, we need to have a discussion about it.
But I think science, in and of itself, is just like a book, and I think it would be dangerous if we didn't open the book.
I think we need better ways to control rats.
I don't like poison coming out of the sky as much as the next person.
The people that are resourcing this kind of technology, a military force, they're after the tools.
The kind of technology they're wanting from Kevin isn't the technology that he's talking to us about, but it's, in fact, the evolving technology in Kevin's little tool bag that can be used for other things.
It's the mightiest fucking military force on the planet.
They don't bullshit about weapons of mass destruction.
I'm just going on their track record, that's all.
Research on a radical new way to combat malaria and other insect-borne diseases could be severely hampered if proposals to introduce a UN moratorium on the work go ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen and dear colleagues, welcome to the 22nd meeting of the Biodiversity Convention.
The risks of humans undermining their own existence are very real, and it is time for the voice of scientists on biodiversity to be heard as loud and clear.
No gene drives! No gene drives! No gene drives! These are the experts from around the world for governments who decide what happens around genetic engineering.
CBD, don't let the gene drives out! And the big topic under discussion here is going to be gene drives.
Mass extinction! Is not a solution! Gene drives are a crazy idea, but militaries are interested.
There are a number of agriculture companies interested.
There needs to be rules internationally saying a moratorium.
Don't put gene drives into the wild, into the field, out of the lab.
- GMO mosquitoes! - Go way! - GMO mosquitoes! - Go way! - Say no to GMO! - Say no to GMO! - Say no to GMO! - Say no to GMO! Genetic engineering brings up the question of control.
Who is profiting? Who is controlling the technology? GMO mosquitoes! - Go away! - GMO mosquitoes! Go away! Agribusiness companies, chemical companies, mega companies around the world are interested because it allows them to control nature.
Look how many people, thousands and thousands, gathered in the capital to say no to GMOs, to say no to modified mosquitoes, to say yes to our sovereignty over our food and health.
Everyone against GMO mosquitoes, raise your hands! NGO 2112, please make the statements very short.
We see proposals proliferating for gene-drive bees, cats, mice, parasitic worms, fruit flies, and more.
There should be no release of gene-drive organisms at this time, and we would like to suggest text that makes this clear.
Gene drives could cause irreversible ecological damage.
There must be a moratorium on any environmental and commercial release.
I think that would be a disgrace, a moratorium.
The first consequence of a prohibition is that somebody will do it anyhow and will be not transparent.
The moratorium will have exactly the opposite effect, so I think, actually, it's dangerous.
It would be desirable if there is a regional agreement, but I think the people that have the problem have the right to implement.
I don't think you need total agreement of everybody.
It is New Zealand’s view that we should assist each application of gene drive based on its own positive and adverse effects.
Germany cannot support the text that can be interpreted as a moratorium.
There's no blueprint for how we govern, oversee, control, uh, an advancing, emerging biotechnology across the globe.
None.
Bolivia observes with profound worry the advancements in gene drives.
South Africa is of the view that gene drives may pose new risk assessment challenges.
Given the current uncertainties regarding engineered gene drives, the Philippines urges parties to take a precautionary approach.
We might think of treaties, but treaties tend to be very difficult to enforce across countries, and good luck with that, frankly.
New Zealand does not support the reference in paragraphs four and five.
The focus should be on an adequate risk assessment.
Prioritization of risk assessment and risk management, as well as Risk assessments We are not comfortable with the recommendations in paragraph four, five We'd like to propose amendments to paragraph Lines two and three in paragraph seven.
If you were to say, "Where have we been successful in that in the past?" - Paragraphs four - Paragraph - Paragraph nine.
- Paragraph six.
There isn't an example.
The thing that we shouldn't forget is that Africa is really suffering from this burden.
At the human level, we are the ones suffering from this thing.
Every single minute, one kid is dying from malaria.
How many people are you going to lose? I was born here in Burkina, grew up in Burkina, and I know what is the burden of malaria.
This is really my hope ever since I have been in this world.
Will we be able to eradicate it in two years or three years? I just can't give you an answer.
But I'm absolutely confident that bearing the burden of malaria is not the fate of Africa.
I do have concerns about whether or not I'm making the right decision.
Ensuring that I'm not wrecking my body further isn't something I can do a hundred percent.
I could impact the virus itself creating an even stronger opponent.
Tristan's concerns his feelings everything has to be taken into account.
He can't be disregarded.
At the same time, the most important thing to do is to keep moving forward, because if we stop working, then our value goes away.
It drops off.
The way I put it is like, there's, like, a maybe Let's say there's a one percent chance that it works and it can positively benefit thousands of people.
Like, how do you balance out those two extremes, the two tails? At what point is it not worth the risk, right? Look at all that.
That water is pretty close to boiling.
And yet it clearly doesn't care about the heat.
Life finds a way.
Science is explicitly about learning to understand the things that we can see and measure.
So as soon as people bring up the spiritual, that's not directly relevant to science.
But the same is true for ethics.
Soon as people bring up the question of what we should do, that's not a scientific question.
Often, the technology is the easy part.
It's always dealing with other people, other complex, evolving creatures with their own evolving ideas in competition with ours.
But you can't just hide out in your lab and invent things without thinking about the consequences.
I still have nightmares about boxes in the Pandora's box sense.
Because we need to keep opening boxes.
Our civilization is not sustainable.
But we're not so hot at telling which ones will help and which ones are dangerous.
So to me, that is the challenge, more than anything else.
How do we coordinate our efforts to ensure that the dangerous ones are not opened? You see how calm they are? In the evening, the bees are nice and calm and settled, and they don't mind being disturbed as much as they normally would, and it's easier for us to harvest.
We don't need any protective gear.
Okay.
There are more options that are available to us.
The natural environment has options on its own.
Science needs to study natural environments, not to change them.
Because science isn't meant to do what Kevin's done, creating a Pandora's box where anything can be used, anything can be done with this gene editing.