Storyville, The Gene Revolution: Changing Human Nature, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, director Adam Bolt.

In November 2018, reports suggested that scientist in China had altered the DNA of twin girls using CRISPR CAS 9 bio-technology. It would be the first time in history that humans edited the genetic code of future generations.

DNA is usually referred to as the building blocks of life. RNA is DNA’s close cousin. If DNA is god’s handwriting on the world, RNA is god’s signature. CRISPR CAS 9 is a counterfeit RNA of god’s signature.

A tweet from scientist Antonio Regalado 4^th March 2014 summed it up, ‘If you don’t like the DNA you have, just add a little CRISPR.’

The variegated coloured wings of a butterfly could be black or white or any colour scientists of genome engineers desired. Repainting butterflies wings doesn’t repurpose them, they still fly and feed and reproduce. But billions of years of evolution in which incremental life changes in which insects and other species adapt to local conditions in Darwinian survival have been excised and the DNA code overwritten. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane in the biosphere.    

The biology that underpins human genetics shows that underneath the skin we’re all the same. Homosapiens with a bit of Neanderthal. Imagine the moron moron’s President Trump’s paternal German grandparents and his Scottish born immigrant mother were white, but they wanted their grandson to be black to fit in better with crime-ridden dystopian American society where of the 42 million black African American only one chump can be Trump President. Obviously, boosting the moron’s moron’s intelligence is beyond the CRISPR script. No one can, for example, give a definitive account of what intelligence is. It does not have a singular DNA code, in the same way that Jewishism or Protestantism doesn’t. Skin colour, however, is easier to read in the melanocyte cells. Genetic bioengineers succeed in making the moron’s moron a black man and enlarging his tiny groping hands, but his penis remains tiny. But big enough to propagate the species with other black Trumpets. He has won the DNA race to be superman.

The downside, the bits that we can fix later, in the hi-tech world of move fast and break things are that interfering with the Trumpets melanocyte cells means the black President is prone to alopecia and all other aspects of aging—the very thing that CRISPR CAS 9 is trying to turn the clock back on—and more likely to result in early dementia. CRISPR would have made the moron’s moron much the same then, but with black skin. No purebred humans, no eugenic supermen—yet.

Deliverance or disaster?

Take the case of David Sanchez who suffers from sickle-cell syndrome. The HBB gene in his genome ‘reads’ A when it should read T.

Fix it?

Of course, he’s a young adolescent with his whole life in front of him. Tens of millions of children in sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean die between the ages of four and eight because their bodies cannot process red-blood cells which oxygenate their shrunken bodies. Yet hundreds of millions also have sickle cells and display no symptoms. They suffer less from mosquito bites and malarial diseases because the mosquito prefers healthier blood. It had become part of their commonwealth germline.

CRISPR CAS 9 optimists see a Brave New World in which technology can eliminate malaria, bring back to life extinct coral reefs and herds of whatever you want to call them. We’re already growing meat cell by cell, but you can’t call it pig or cow or poultry or fish. Health Care will be wealthcare with most excluded and locked out. Our NHS will be run by Google or some other tech company that has merged with a biotech start-up that has grown quicker than what used to be called Facebook, which now runs our policing services. CRISPR CAS 9 does not change the superstructure of society it just exacerbates existing conditions.

Few believe CRISPR will create a more equal society. The head start in life the rich already possess will begin even earlier. To be well-born will be to be well-screened and well-to-do. The Darwinian natural order based on will be a constantly updated book of life. Winners and losers. I’m poor, by definition, a pessimist. If your superrich there’s nothing to be frightened of. The long struggle of Galton’s eugenic movement, based on the fear of the tyranny of the common man, is over. Rich people really are better. They can prove it. Read their Genome coding. If your children find themselves on the wrong page—god help them. Concentration camps will be simply were we store things. But they won’t be called that, of course. Replaceable parts, not worth keeping.