When CRISPR Evokes Fear “Gene Editing” Doesn’t

I’m seeing this NPR CIRSPR trials article going around, with comments ranging from the relatively mild “here we go” to the more typical doom-and-gloom engineering humans into super-race/extinction/X-men/choose your X-related catastrophe. And while the Editas one (still) concerns me—I don’t think the tech is where it needs to be, and I don’t believe anyone will stand up to the founders of Editas because of who they are–I, overall, am not at all fussed about these trials. Why? Well, take this Penn cancer study. It’s not like this is NEW. The tool, CRISPR, is, but it’s just changing the kind of tool being used for gene editing. We’ve been gene editing for disease treatment for a while now. For example: on Weds, there was a paper in NEJM using HIV to cure bubble boy syndrome. How? HIV was the gene editing tool. The cure was cool and new, the tool was