Economic Implications

 Currently, all CRISPR has in store for the world is sky-high pricing and a greater social divide. With pricings currently over 100,000 dollars for one treatment, only the top 1% will be able to afford this life-changing (and sometimes life-saving) tool. If insurance attempts to allow everyone to get these treatments if necessary, prices for insurance will also sky-rocket. It might even become a checkbox on your insurance questionnaire (do you want us to cover genetic editing?) Vantage Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island, Select Health, and VIVA Health have already shared that they will not be covering the cost of genetic therapies because of this great expense. Hopefully, insurance companies who would not be able to take the hit will  do the same thing, as a price tag this large does not spell good news for those who have to pay for it. 

A future (but feasible) method of using genetic engineering in the world would be using algae to create oil. This could not only lower the production cost of oil immensely, but also lower the price of gas and create a more bio-friendly fuel. By knocking out lipid inhibitors in the gene sequence of the algae, and depriving them of their nutrients, algae goes into a dormant stage that starts building lipids for energy storage. These lipids generate oil in some strains of algae and can be turned into a biofuel. Unfortunately, getting to this stage in the process takes a long time as algae is very old. The older something is, the more inactive genes it has. These genes, while important, get in the way when a scientist is trying to figure out what every gene does.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like this is going to happen anytime soon as most of the funding has been pulled from this research. 

Currently, genetic engineering is also being used to create insulin from yeast. Today, around half the world’s production of insulin comes from these yeast factories. Hopefully, this could also help solve the exorbitant price of insulin. The patent for insulin was originally sold for 1$ by Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and James Collip to allow insulin to be widely accessible.  The average price for a bottle of insulin in the UK is 8$, and in America it is 99$; the second highest country is Chile, and they sell it for only 21$. More recently, in 2023, genetic engineering has also been used to create insulin in lettuce. By placing the human genes for insulin in a lettuce, scientists were able to construct a pill (instead of an injection) from the lettuce that is able to act as an insulin injection. Hopefully this could also help bring down the price of insulin as it passes clinical trials.

Thanks to CRISPR, quick and accurate covid-19 tests have been created. These take-home-tests are very important, not only because they allow for self-diagnosis, but also because they created widespread access to testing. A take-home covid test was a huge industry during the pandemic, so if a take-home test for covid could be created, what about one for different STDs? What about a test that allows for several viruses to be looked for with one test? This has the possibility to become a huge field because not only would it decentralize testing, making it more accessible, but it would also slow the spreading of different conditions as people would have access to fast, cheap (hopefully), and accurate tests. 

Genetic engineering could also have a large impact on the workforce: because people who would have died now live, the amount of people working would increase. Genetic disorders are a leading cause of death in the US, and lack of genome sequencing among children can be credited with at least some of the deaths. Early intervention is the only ‘cure’ for genetic disorders because treatments that change the DNA that causes the disorder haven’t passed the FDA yet. CRISPR would be able to take treatments even further because it affects the cause of the condition rather than just the symptoms. This decrease in deaths, not only thanks to genome sequencing and early-intervention, but also due to genetic engineering, would lead to a more robust economy as more people enter the workforce. 

God Complex

 God complex: believing that you are better than everyone else, thus believing that you should play god, as you know what's best for everyone. 

A god complex comes into play with genetic engineering most clearly when looking at a designer baby. This is a child in which genetic engineering is taken to the extreme. Parents would build them just like a doll: skin color, hair, eye color, etc. This pick and choose method of ‘building’ a child can affect the 3 people involved with the god complex: the child, the scientist, and the parents. A child, built to be perfect in every way, might automatically assume that they are better than everyone else. Similar to how a spoiled child only thinks of themselves, so too would this child, perfect in their parent’s eyes, grow up to believe that they are above others. The scientist would grow a god complex slowly, by playing god one too many times. The mentality of: this worked, so why not this, is one that inspires going too far down the road of no return. When something is created and released in genetic engineering, it can not be taken back. That creature’s impact on the wild world is one that will continue on with its descendants, their descendants, and even the ones following that. Eventually, a scientist gone too far down the path of no return will begin to ask themselves some not-so-friendly questions. For example, because of white supremacy, over 1,000 African Americans were hate crimed in 2021. Wouldn’t it be better if they were all white? The answer to this question is obviously of course not. The problem with society is not found in someone’s skin color but in the way people react to it, and assume things based upon it. Parents could also develop a god complex. By designing a ‘perfect child’, they could begin to see themselves as a god– creating perfect things and molding their DNA to their will.  

But that would only happen in humans, right? No. Scientists could also take things too far in animals. It only takes one billionaire’s wish and suddenly a unicorn might be among earth’s creatures. Taking the horn of a narwhal and using its genes to place it on the head of a horse (with probably a lot of figuring and trial-and-error inbetween) could lead to the creation of a unicorn. Beyond this, what about some rich idiot being inspired to create a Jurassic Park from the genes of birds?  Genome tectonics is a way of looking at genes that allows scientists to figure out the changes in chromosomes that have happened over hundreds of millions of years. Using this approach, it might be possible to construct something like a dinosaur from the DNA of birds. Granted, this is a very far-flung possibility, as most people have common sense, right? On a slightly more positive note, these technologies could also be used to bring back extinct animals like the dodo, or increase the population of endangered animals. Each of these steps, however, comes with their own warning label for destroying the ecosystem. While in some ways this could be a positive change, as it could help balance the ecosystem, it is also important to understand that some things went extinct for a reason. Maybe it could simply be used for scientific discovery? Oftentimes small actions eventually snowball into something much bigger and out of control. Regulations to prevent people from pushing things too far because of a growing god complex is the first step. 

When IVF (in-vitro fertilization) was first created and used, people had a horrible reaction. Not only did religious groups turn against it, claiming that they were playing god, but the media became way too involved with the life of the child. IVF and genetic engineering  have received a similar reaction, with the hatred of IVF similar to the hatred of GMOs. Some people believe that the future of people’s acceptance of genetic engineering will be much the same as the reaction to IVF– outrage, grudging acceptance, and eventually seeing it as commonplace. While genetic engineering has a larger applicable field of effects, the resistance found toward things as small as GMOs, all the way to things as large as designer babies, is about the same. There is a natural revulsion to change- especially change in the ‘natural order’.  However, humans who choose to embrace genetic engineering are not playing God by using the tools they have. Hopefully, they use it to heal the world. Just as Chemotherapy causes both harm and good, so can genetic modification do the same thing. We just have to find the right way to use it.