Catch the biorevolution train, or why futurology is needed
Very briefly about where the progress of biology leads and the importance of studying the future in three parts.
1. Biotechnologies and life
GMO people? Yes
At the end of 2018, a chinese professor announced the birth of two twin girls in whose embryo he “disabled” the CCR5 gene. He explained this as a desire to make children immune to their father’s HIV infection.
Although we are talking about the world’s first genetically modified people, the main reaction to the event was the indignation of experts: the Chinese applied a new, breakthrough method of editing genes CRISPR/Cas9 (“Crisper”), which is actively used for editing DNA, but creates side effects and such experiments on people are considered, so far, not ethical and are prohibited in many countries. The Professor has been subjected to state censure and does not get in touch. To date, the fate of the children is unknown…
However, not all experts support a complete ban on such experiments. The characteristic news was announced by the BBC in a note: “a Russian biologist wants to create genetically modified children. What hinders him and what does Vladimir Putin have to do with it?” (www.bbc.com/russian/features-49883302). Dilemma between the danger of such experiments and their enormous potential benefits is a difficult, demanding, scientific and ethical problem.
However, despite the complexity of the situation, there is no doubt that…
...the widespread use of genetic technologies in humans is only a matter of time. The world is on the verge of managing human biology.
Why should manage biology?
The need for this is quite clear: human bio-physiology, formed by evolution, is very imperfect. One of the consequences of this is, for example, thousands of fatal diseases and minor ailments that torment people.
Although modern medicine of tablets and scalpels has achieved great success in the fight against them and continues to develop actively, its fundamental limitations are obvious: it will never be able to cure all diseases, it will not be able to give what a person really needs — absolute health. There is only one way out of this impasse, which seems paradoxical at first glance — we need to change and improve… biology of people themselves.
Health medicine
The General meaning here can be explained as follows: it is known that living beings suffer only from diseases that their biology allows. So people are genetically protected from swine fever viruses, and animals do not suffer from many of our diseases. This means that purposefully changing (modifying) the genome can make a person immune to infections. It is even more obvious that biological modification (biomodification) is the only remedy for hereditary and genetic diseases, somatic and mental.
The theoretical possibility, the visible progress in the development of genetic biomodification technologies and their understandable huge benefits leave no doubt that such a genetic and biological biomedicine will be created in the foreseeable future.
It will become the embodiment of the idea of “health medicine” that eliminates the root causes of pathologies, while the modern, struggling with their consequences, “medicine of diseases”, will develop as a means of emergency assistance in case of acciden
