Challenges that await man, up to 2050: Genetic modification

The debates among scientists began to boil last year over a new technology that allows us to change Human DNA. It's called Crispr and it's a means to change Human DNA, with the aim of getting diseases like cancer out of the equation.

That sounds fantastic, doesn't it? What happens, though, if you take a dark ethical turn and become a project to design the right creatures, selecting embryos that produce babies that will have a certain amount of intelligence or that have certain physical characteristics?

While not yet widely used to be considered a large “sfide of the present”, this is a future advance, for which the consequences of our preparation must be prepared. It is reasonable to make sure that the Ethics have a seat on the table in any laboratory, university and corporation that might seek to change our DNA.

The right reflection on what we might want to save from ourselves requires time to be drawn from a broad spectrum of perspectives, about what it means to be human”, says Nikola Agar, professor of ethics at Wellington Victoria University in New Zealand. “It's hard to create time for ethical reflection, when new technology possibilities line at speed”. /bota.al