the computers would soon take over everything.

>From shopping to dating and the stock market.

That billions of people would be connected via a kind of web.

That you would own a handheld device

orders of magnitude more powerful than supercomputers.

It would seem absurd but then all of it happened.

Science fiction became our reality that we don't even think about it

We're at a similar point today with genetic engineering.

So let's talk about it.

Where it came from? What we're doing right now?

And about a recent breakthrough that will change how we live

and what we perceive as "normal" forever.

Humans have been engineering life for thousands of years. Through selective breeding

we strengthened useful traits and plants and animals.

We became very good at this but never truly understood how it works.

Until we discovered the code of life: deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA,

a complex molecule the guide of the growth, development function

and reproduction of everything alive.

Information is encoded in the structure of the molecule.

Four nucleotides are paired and make up a code that carries instructions.

Change the instructions and you change the being carrying it.

As soon as DNA was discovered people try to tinker with it.

In the 1960's, scientists bombarded plants with radiation

to cause random mutations in the genetic code.

The idea was to get a useful plant variation by pure chance.

Sometimes, it actually worked too.

In the 70's, scientists inserted DNA snippets into bacteria, plants and animals

to study and modify them for research, medicine, agriculture and for fun.

The earliest genetically modified animal was born in 1974,

making mice a standard tool for research, saving millions of lives.

In the 80's, we got commercial.

first patent was given for a microbe engineered to absorb oil today we

produce many chemicals by means of engineered life like life-saving

clotting factors growth hormones and insulin, all things we had to harvest

from the organs of animals before that. The first food modified in the lab went

on sale in 1994: the Flavr Savr tomato, a tomato given a much longer shelf life

where an extra gene that suppresses the build-up of a rotting enzyme. But GM food

and the controversy surrounding them deserve a video of their own.

In the 1990's there was also a brief foray into human engineering. To treat

maternal infertility, babies were made to carry genetic information from

three humans making them the first humans ever to have three genetic

parents. Today there are super muscled pigs, fast-growing salmon, featherless

chickens and see-through frogs. On the fun side, we made things glow in the dark

fluorescent zebrafish are available for as little as ten dollars.

All of this is already very impressive but until recently,

gene editing was extremely expensive, complicated and took a long time to do.

This has now changed with a revolutionary new technology now

entering the stage: CRISPR. Overnight, the costs of engineering have shrunk by 99%

Instead of a year.

it takes a few weeks to conduct experiments and basically everybody with

a lab can do it. It's hard to get across how big a technical revolution CRISPR is.

It literally has the potential to change humanity forever.

Why did this sudden revolution happen and how does it work?

Bacteria and viruses have been fighting since the dawn of life.

So-called bacteriophages, or phages, hunt bacteria.

In the ocean, phages kill 40% of them every single day.

Phages do this by inserting their own genetic code into

the bacteria and taking them over to use them as factories.

The bacteria try to resist, but fail most of the time

because their protection tools are too weak.

But sometimes, bacteria survive an attack. Only if they do so can they activate

their most effective antivirus system. They save a part of the virus DNA in

their own genetic code in a DNA archive called CRISPR.

Here it's stored safely until it's needed.

When the virus attacks again, the bacterium quickly makes an RNA copy

from the DNA archive and arms a secret weapon, a protein called Cas9.

The protein now scans the bacterium's inside for signs of the virus invader by

comparing every bit of DNA it finds to the sample from the archive.

When it finds a 100-percent perfect match

it's activated and cuts out the virus DNA making it useless, protecting the

bacterium against the attack.

What's special is that Cas9 is very precise, almost like a DNA surgeon.

The revolution began when scientists figured out that the CRISPR system is programmable.

You can just give it a copy of DNA you want to modify and put the

system into a living cell. If the old techniques of genetic manipulation were

like a map, CRISPR is like a GPS system. Aside from being precise cheap and easy,

CRISPR offers the ability to edit life cells to switch genes on and

off and target and study particular DNA sequences.

It also works for every type of cell: microorganisms, plants

animals or humans. But despite the revolution CRISPR is for science,

it's still just a first generation tool. More precise tools are already being

created and used as we speak.

In 2015, scientists use CRISPR to cut the HIV virus out of living cells from patients

in the lab, proving that it was possible. Only about a year later they carried out

a larger scale project with rats that had the HIV virus in basically all of

their body cells. By simply injecting CRISPR into the rats tails, they were

able to remove more than 50% of the virus from cells all over the body.

In a few decades, a CRISPR therapy might cure HIV and other retroviruses.

Viruses that hide inside human DNA like herpes could be eradicated this way.

CRISPR could also defeat one of our worst enemies: cancer. Cancer occurs when

cells refused to die and keep multiplying while concealing themselves

from the immune system. CRISPR gives us the means to edit your immune cells and

make them better cancer hunters. Getting rid of cancer might eventually mean

getting just a couple of injections of a few thousand of your own cells that have

been engineered in the lab to heal you for good.

The first clinical trial for a CRISPR cancer treatment on human patients was

approved in early 2016 in the US. Not even a month later, Chinese

scientists announced that they would treat lung cancer patients with immune

cells modified by CRISPR in August 2016. Things are picking up pace quickly.

And then there are genetic diseases. There are thousands of them and they range,

from merely annoying to deadly or entail decades of suffering. With a powerful

tool like CRISPR, we may be able to end this. Over 3,000 genetic diseases are

caused by a single incorrect letter in your DNA.

We are already building a modified version of Cas9 that is made to

change just a single letter, fixing the disease in the cell. In a decade or two

we could possibly cure thousands of diseases forever. But all of these

medical applications have one thing in common: they are limited to the

individual and die with them, except if you use them on reproductive cells or

very early embryos. But CRISPR can and probably will be used for much more:

the creation of modified humans, designer babies and will mean gradual but

irreversible changes to the human gene pool.

The means to edit the genome of a

human embryo already exists, though the technology is still in its early stages.

But it has already been attempted twice: in 2015 and 2016, Chinese scientists

experimented with human embryos and were partially successful on their second

attempt. They showed the enormous challenges we still face in gene editing

embryos but also that scientists are working on solving them.

This is like the computer in the seventies: there will be better computers.

Regardless of your personal take on genetic engineering, it will affect you.

Modified humans could alter the genome of our entire species because their

engineered traits will be passed on to that children and could spread over

generations slowly modifying the whole gene pool of humanity. It will start

slowly: the first designer babies will not be overly designed, it's most likely

that they will be created to eliminate deadly genetic disease running a family.

As the technology progresses and gets more refined, more and more people may argue

that not using genetic modification is unethical, because it condemns children

to preventable suffering and death and denies them to cure. But as soon as the

first engineered kid is born, a door is opened that can't be closed anymore.

Early on, vanity traits will mostly be left alone, but as genetic modification

becomes more accepted and our knowledge of our genetic code enhances,

the temptation will grow.

If you make your offspring immune to Alzheimer, why not also

give them an enhanced metabolism?

Why not throw in perfect eyesight? How about height or muscular structure?

Full hair? How about giving your child the gift of extraordinary intelligence? Huge changes

are made as a result of the personal decisions of millions of individuals

that accumulate. This is a slippery slope. Modified humans could become the new

standard, but as engineering becomes more normal and our knowledge improves, we

could solve the single biggest mortality risk factor: aging. Two-thirds of the

150,000 people who die today will die of age-related causes. Currently we think

aging is caused by the accumulation of damage to ourselves, like DNA breaks and

the system's responsible for fixing those wearing off over time. But there

are also genes that directly affect aging. A combination of genetic

engineering and other therapy could stop or slow down aging, maybe even reverse it.

We know from nature that there are animals immune to aging. Maybe we could

even borrow a few genes for ourselves. Some scientists even think biological

aging could be something that eventually just stops being a thing. We would still

die at some point, but instead of doing so in hospitals at age 90

we might be able to spend a few thousand years with our loved ones. Research into

this is in its infancy, and many scientists are rightly skeptical about

the end of aging. The challenges are enormous, and maybe it is unachievable.

But it is conceivable that people alive today might be the first to profit from

effective anti aging therapy. All we might need is for someone to convince a

smart billionaire to make it their next problem to solve. On a bigger scale we

certainly could solve many problems by having a modified population. Engineered

humans might be better equipped to cope with high-energy food, eliminating many

diseases of civilization like obesity.

In possession of a modified immune system with a library of potential

threat, we might become immune to most diseases that haunt us today.

Even further into the future we could engineer humans to be equipped for

extended space travel and to cope with different conditions on other planet,

which would be extremely helpful in keeping us alive in our hostile universe.

Still a few major challenges await us. Some technological, some ethical.

Many of you watching will feel uncomfortable and fear that we will create a world in

which we will reject non-perfect humans and preselect features and qualities

based on our idea of what's healthy.

The thing is we are already living in this world. Tests for dozens of genetic

diseases or complications have become standard for pregnant women

in much of the world.

Often, the mere suspicion of a genetic defect can lead to the end of pregnancy.

Take Down Syndrome for example: one of the most common genetic defects.

In Europe, about ninety percent of all pregnancies where it's detected are

terminated. The decision to terminate pregnancy is incredibly personal, but

it's important to acknowledge the reality that we are preselecting humans

based on medical conditions. There is also no use in pretending this will

change, so we have to act carefully and respectfully as we advance the

technology and can make more and more selections. But none of this will happen

soon: as powerful as CRISPR is, and it is, it's not infallible yet. Wrong edit

still happen as well as unknown errors that could occur anywhere in the DNA and

might go unnoticed. The gene edit might achieve the desired result

disabling a disease, but also might accidentally trigger unwanted changes.

We just don't know enough yet about the complex interplay of our genes to avoid

unpredictable consequences. Working on accuracy and monitoring methods is a

major concern as the first human trials begin. And since we've discussed a

possible positive future, there are darker visions too.

Imagine what a state like North Korea could do if they embraced genetic

engineering. Could a state cement its rule forever by forcing gene editing on

their subjects? What would stop a totalitarian regime from engineering an

army of modified super soldiers? It is doable in theory? Scenarios like this one

are far far off into the future, if they ever become possible at all. But the

basic proof of concept for genetic engineering like this already exists

today. The technology really is that powerful. One of this might be a tempting

reason to ban genetic editing and related research that would certainly

be a mistake.

Banning human genetic engineering would only lead to the science wandering off

to a place with jurisdiction and rules that we are uncomfortable with. Only by

participating can we make sure that further research is guided by caution,

reason, oversight and transparency.

Do you feel uncomfortable now? Most of us have