Thus, the distinction between “natural” and “unnatural” has been obscured. Red grapefruits created by neutron radiation, seedless watermelons produced with the chemical compound colchicine, apple orchards in which every tree is a perfect genetic clone of its neighbors – none of these aspects of modern agriculture is natural. Yet most of us eat these foods without complaint.

The disjunction between scientific consensus and public opinion on the topic of GMOs is disturbing, to say the least.

The power to control our species’ genetic future is awesome and terrifying. Deciding how to handle it may be the biggest challenge we have ever faced.

we founded Editas Medicine with $43 million in financing from three venture capital firms.

PGD has also been used for other controversial purposes, such as the birth if so-called savior siblings, destined from the moment of implantation not only to live their own lives, but also to serve as organ or cell donors for a sibling.

I'd recently co-founded an institute in the Bay Area called the Innovative Genomics Institute (ICI) with the goal of advancing gene-editing technologies.

in 2011, Rachel and I founded a company called Caribou Biosciences to commercialize the Cas proteins.

improving on the natural course if evolution—which, attendees argued, could be so cruel as to justify some sort of intervention.

Editas Medicine has an exclusive multimillion-dollar license with Juno Therapeutics to develop T cell therapies

American spy agencies seemed rattled by the experiments too. I was shocked when the next Worldwide Threat Assessment — the annual report presented by the U.S. intelligence community to the Senate Armed Services Committee — described genome editing as one of the six weapons of mass destruction and proliferation that nation-states might try to develop, at great risk to America.