While known experiments with Crispr—to improve crops, modify malaria-carrying mosquitoes, treat cancer—are constantly expanding, no government has approved wielding the tool to manipulate what’s called human germlines. China condemned the work of researcher He Jiankui last year as “unlawful” after He announced the birth of twin girls who were genetically altered to be resistant to HIV.
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Putin, 66, has made it increasingly clear … that he expects genetic engineering’s eventual impact on society to be as great as or even greater than artificial intelligence—in ways both good and bad. In 2017, he predicted “people” would start editing pre-birth human DNA “very soon,” a development with possible military applications that he’s warned could be “more terrible than a nuclear bomb.”
Last year, before He revealed his achievement, … Putin allocated about $2 billion for genetic research …. It’s an area of study that Putin has said will “determine the future of the whole world.”
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With China now strictly regulating human-embryo editing and the U.S. recently extending its ban, Russia has the chance to become the prime mover in an industry with unfathomable upside ….
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