Speaker 1: Pushkin, you're listening to Brave New Planet, a podcast about
Speaker 1: amazing new technologies that could dramatically improve our world, or
Speaker 1: if we don't make wise choices, could leave us a
Speaker 1: lot worse off. Utopia or dystopia. It's up to us.
Speaker 1: On October eighth, seventeen sixty nine, James Cook, an explorer
Speaker 1: and captain in the British Royal Navy, became the first
Speaker 1: European to set foot on the islands that are today
Speaker 1: known as New Zealand. His arrival would have dramatic consequences
Speaker 1: for the Maori people that had inhabited the land for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. It would also radically alter New Zealand's ecology,
Speaker 1: because when Cook disembarked, so too did some of the
Speaker 1: rats that did hitchhike on his ship. Previously unknown to
Speaker 1: the Pacific Islands, these rodents grew in population over the
Speaker 1: centuries and wreaked havoc on the environment. We're in the
Speaker 1: middle of a rodent nami. You've seen the headlines. Rats
Speaker 1: as big as cats. Rats everywhere. It is a problem too,
Speaker 1: everywhere that you wouldn't believes. Hey, we've probably got the
Speaker 1: most rats that double the most rats with ever head
Speaker 1: shocking actually jsay shocking, and it's not just unpleasantness that's
Speaker 1: the problem. The rats and other invasive mammals have been
Speaker 1: decimating New Zealand's birds. They devoured tens of millions of
Speaker 1: eggs and baby birds every year, causing the extinction of
Speaker 1: one quarter of the nation's unique bird species. New Zealand
Speaker 1: has long tried to get rid of these invaders. The
Speaker 1: traditional answer has been to spread rat poison all over
Speaker 1: the islands, often by helicopters, but rat poison is indiscriminate.
Speaker 1: Native animals can also die from eating it. Sometimes humans
Speaker 1: accidentally consume it as well, and it hasn't solved the problem. Recently,
Speaker 1: scientists have proposed a much more targeted solution. It's called
Speaker 1: a gene drive, a genetic engineering trick that guarantees that
Speaker 1: when two animals mate, a specific gene will be inherited
Speaker 1: by one hundred percent of their progeny. In time, any gene,
Speaker 1: even a disadvantageous gene, would spread through the population. If
Speaker 1: New Zealand were to release genetically engineered rats with a
Speaker 1: gene drive, to dramatically decrease the rat's fertility, while the
Speaker 1: rat population would shrink, In effect, evolution could be directed
Speaker 1: to vote the rats off the islands. And it's not
Speaker 1: just rats. Gene drives might be used against any invasive
Speaker 1: animal or plant that uses sexual reproduction, and they might
Speaker 1: also be used to save species, for example, by helping
Speaker 1: them survive the effects of climate change. Most importantly, gene
Speaker 1: drives might save millions of lives by eliminating or modifying
Speaker 1: the mosquito that's primarily responsible for spreading malaria throughout sub
Speaker 1: Saharan Africa. Now, no one has yet deployed gene drives
Speaker 1: in the wild, but they've been shown to work in
Speaker 1: the laboratory reshaping nature. It's a heady concept. Scientists are
Speaker 1: exhilarated by the possibilities for improving the world. At the
Speaker 1: same time they're wondering what could possibly go wrong. Today's
Speaker 1: big question. Should we use gene drives to correct the
Speaker 1: past introduction of invasive species, protect species from the ravages
Speaker 1: of climate change, and save humans from serious infectious diseases
Speaker 1: or is it too risky? Evolution in ecology, after all,
Speaker 1: can be strangely unpredictable. When might the risks be justified?
Speaker 1: And when you're proposing to release things into nature, who
Speaker 1: needs to say yes. My name is Eric Lander. I'm
Speaker 1: a scientist who works on ways to improve human health.
Speaker 1: I helped lead the Human Genome Project, and today I
Speaker 1: lead the Road Institute of MIT and Harvard. In the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, powerful technologies have been appearing at a
Speaker 1: breathtaking pace, related to the Internet, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering,
Speaker 1: and more. They have amazing potential upsides, but we can't
Speaker 1: ignore the risks that come with them. The decisions aren't
Speaker 1: just up to scientists or politicians, whether we like it
Speaker 1: or not, we all of us are the stewards of
Speaker 1: a brave New planet. This generation's choices will shape the
Speaker 1: future as never before. Coming up on this episode of
Speaker 1: Brave New Planets, we speak to scientists who played a
Speaker 1: key role in inventing gene drives. This is potentially a
Speaker 1: much more elegant way of solving ecological problems than poisons
Speaker 1: and bulldozers. We talk with people trying to balance the
Speaker 1: benefits and risks. Okay, so people are looking at using
Speaker 1: genetic engineering to alter wild species. This is really exciting
Speaker 1: and at the same time I'm literally in the same breath,
Speaker 1: I was also just like, holy crap, if this isn't
Speaker 1: used properly, this could be really damaging to our planet.
Speaker 1: We hear from a scientist in Burkina Fasso who wants
Speaker 1: to use gene drives to get rid of malaria. This
Speaker 1: is really my dream and my hope that I can
Speaker 1: come up with something that kind of really helps not
Speaker 1: only Africa. And a journalist from Kenya who's pretty skeptical.
Speaker 1: It's very nice to think that people really care about
Speaker 1: the lives of Africans, But I think the story is
Speaker 1: a lot more complex than that. Stay tuned. Chapter one
Speaker 1: snails the size of baseballs. To understand the reasons why
Speaker 1: people might want to use gene drives, I talked with
Speaker 1: someone who's thought a lot about them. My name is
Speaker 1: doctor James Collins go by Jim, a professor in the
Speaker 1: School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. Jim is
Speaker 1: an evolutionary ecollegist who co chaired a study on gene
Speaker 1: drives for the US National Academy of Sciences. For an
Speaker 1: evolutionary ecologist, he has a bit of an unusual upbringing.
Speaker 1: I grew up in New York City, Queens and always
Speaker 1: just had a love of plants and animals. In New
Speaker 1: York City. In New York City, Queens at the time
Speaker 1: was different than Queens today. I could go fishing. I
Speaker 1: could catch turtles and snakes and frogs, all kinds of insects,
Speaker 1: bring them home to my very tolerant parents. Jim knows
Speaker 1: a lot about how ecosystems can be disrupted by the
Speaker 1: introduction of new species, from microbes to mammals. He told
Speaker 1: me that Captain Cook was responsible for more than just
Speaker 1: introducing rats into New Zealand. Think about Hawaiian birds where
Speaker 1: they are endangered by avian malaria, and that's as a
Speaker 1: result of a mosquito being introduced by Captain Cook. Then
Speaker 1: the colonists brought chickens, and they brought avian malaria. The
Speaker 1: mosquitoes begin to feed on the chickens, acquire the malaria,
Speaker 1: and then begin to feed on native birds, transmit the
Speaker 1: malaria to native birds, and they are being diminished in
Speaker 1: terms of population sizes, and even species. In fact, Hawaii
Speaker 1: has become the bird extinction capital of the world. Since
Speaker 1: humans arrived ninety five, one hundred and forty two birds
Speaker 1: species found nowhere else in the world have become extinct
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. Even small scale introduction of a new species
Speaker 1: can lead to massive problems. In nineteen sixty six, a
Speaker 1: young boy who was vacationing in Hawaii decided to take
Speaker 1: a few of the giant land snails that live there
Speaker 1: back to his home in Miami to keep them as
Speaker 1: pets in the family garden. The snails, which can grow
Speaker 1: larger than the size of baseballs, reproduced quickly. They soon
Speaker 1: began to cause economic damage to local farms, and they
Speaker 1: also carried dangerous parasites slithering along at quite literally a
Speaker 1: snail's pace. They certainly don't look menacing, but for the
Speaker 1: Florida Department of Agriculture, this is a horror movie. The
Speaker 1: problem with these things They love just about anything that
Speaker 1: grows in Florida. The eradication effort, which used poisons, took
Speaker 1: ten years and cost over a million dollars, but despite
Speaker 1: all the work, the snail population eventually bounced back. In
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, the Florida Department of Agriculture went door to
Speaker 1: door searching for the snails. They found a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousands, with two properties alone harboring seven hundred of
Speaker 1: the critters. With other invasive species, the measures have been
Speaker 1: even more dramatic. In the nineteen fifties, Australia tried to
Speaker 1: exterminate an escalating population of European rabbits that had been
Speaker 1: introduced a century earlier by an English settler. Their solution
Speaker 1: was to release rabbits carrying a deadly Mixoma virus. It
Speaker 1: killed millions of rabbits across Australia, but it didn't solve
Speaker 1: the problem. There are hundreds of invasive species that people
Speaker 1: would like to be rid of, zebra muscles in the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes, silver carp in the Missouri River, kudzuweed, and
Speaker 1: Georgia burmese pythons in the Everglades. But the species that
Speaker 1: cause the most harm to humans aren't recent invaders. They're
Speaker 1: indigenous mosquitoes that spread malaria in Africa. My name is
Speaker 1: Diane Worth. I'm on the faculty at the Harvard chan
Speaker 1: School of Public Health. I work on malaria. Diane is
Speaker 1: also a colleague of mine at the Broad Institute, and
Speaker 1: she studied malaria for over thirty five years. Malaria starts
Speaker 1: as a fever and chills. It has nondescript symptoms in
Speaker 1: the early stages, but then as the disease progresses, people
Speaker 1: can go into a coma, they get very sick, and
Speaker 1: it spreads by mosquitoes. That's right. The disease is transmitted
Speaker 1: by the anopling mosquito in Africa. That's Avelis Gambia, a
Speaker 1: mosquito that's very efficient at transmitting malaria. The world has
Speaker 1: tried to eradicate malaria once before, in the middle of
Speaker 1: the last century, when they had DDT and chloroquin DDT
Speaker 1: to kill mosquitos and chloroquin to treat infected people, and
Speaker 1: that effort did lead to some successes. Malaria was eated
Speaker 1: from Italy, from most of Southern Europe, from the United
Speaker 1: States by a combination of those techniques and environmental activities,
Speaker 1: including putting oil on the top of water so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be environmentally allowed now, but was done in the
Speaker 1: Tennessee Valley here in the United States in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: And that effort failed in most of the world, and
Speaker 1: in fact, that effort really never included Sub Saharan Africa,
Speaker 1: because the experts at the time concluded that in Sub
Speaker 1: Saharan Africa, transmission was so intense that no effort could
Speaker 1: bring it under control. How are we doing in the
Speaker 1: elimination of malaria today. I think what's happened in the
Speaker 1: last decade is two things. One, there's been an overall
Speaker 1: reduction in the number of cases of malaria through increased
Speaker 1: distribution of bednets, better diagnostics, better use of treatment drugs.
Speaker 1: We've dropped cases by forty percent worldwide and deaths by
Speaker 1: about fifty percent worldwide. The other part of the story
Speaker 1: is really sub Saharan Africa, where progress has slowed and
Speaker 1: in many cases reversed. For example, Nigeria has twenty five
Speaker 1: percent of all of the malaria in the world, and
Speaker 1: ten countries make up seventy percent of the burden of
Speaker 1: malaria worldwide. All of these countries in Africa, progress using
Speaker 1: our standard tools has stalled. In those countries. We're going
Speaker 1: to need innovation in order to actually continue the downward
Speaker 1: trend and in fact, in some cases reverse what appears
Speaker 1: to be a rebound in the number of cases. The
Speaker 1: mosquitoes are rebounding in port because they've evolved resistance to
Speaker 1: overcome traditional methods of control. The major insecticide that we
Speaker 1: use to kill mosquitos. There's resistance in almost all mosquito populations,
Speaker 1: and so we anticipate that the need to have new
Speaker 1: insecticides is urgent, and without that we're unlikely to reach
Speaker 1: to eradication girls, particularly in sub Saharan Africa. So scientists
Speaker 1: are constantly imagining new solutions to save ecosystems and to
Speaker 1: save human lives. Could gene drives be the answer? Chapter
Speaker 1: two selfish genes? Instead of deploying poisons and viruses, what
Speaker 1: if we could just genetically reprogram pests to slow or
Speaker 1: even stop their reproduction. The strategy may sound simple, but
Speaker 1: it has a gaping hole. The logic of natural selection
Speaker 1: means the disadvantageous genes, ones that cause an organism to
Speaker 1: produce fewer offspring, should die out. Ah, But there's a
Speaker 1: loophole in theory. A gene could spread into population even
Speaker 1: if it hurts an organism's reproduction, if it could find
Speaker 1: a way to ensure that it gets inherited by most
Speaker 1: of the offspring. Could nature actually do that? Nature does
Speaker 1: such things often again, evolutionary ecologist Jim Collins well known
Speaker 1: example is a driving y chromosome in some species of mice,
Speaker 1: which converts a population into all males, and of course
Speaker 1: that population then would go extinct. It's one of those
Speaker 1: very interesting quirks of evolution in which you wind up
Speaker 1: with populations of all males basically blinking out of existence,
Speaker 1: and so you get one group can be converted into males,
Speaker 1: it goes extinct, but there are other groups that still
Speaker 1: have males and females and they'll continue on. When we
Speaker 1: think of how genes are passed on, we usually think
Speaker 1: about the laws of Mendelian inheritance, first recognized by Gregor Mendel,
Speaker 1: a friar and scientist who studied pea plants in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds. Mendel figured out that in sexually reproducing species,
Speaker 1: each individual has two copies of each gene, one from
Speaker 1: their mother, one from their father. They pass on one
Speaker 1: of those two copies to each child, with the two
Speaker 1: copies each having a fifty fifty chance of being passed on.
Speaker 1: For example, imagine a gene that determines the sex of
Speaker 1: an offspring. If you have a sexually reproducing species that
Speaker 1: has males and females in it, a baby would be
Speaker 1: predicted to be a male fifty percent of the time
Speaker 1: female fifty percent of the time. But what if a
Speaker 1: gene naturally evolved that could cheat, could greedily stack the
Speaker 1: deck so that it gets inherited sixty eighty percent or
Speaker 1: even a hundred percent of the time, biologists referred to
Speaker 1: such selfish behavior as a gene drive. Party gene drive
Speaker 1: could do is changed that ratio as far as any
Speaker 1: particular genetic trade is concerned. So what was the first
Speaker 1: time anybody noticed the existence of a natural gene drive?
Speaker 1: They were described the very late eighteen hundreds, very early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, so it's been known for a long time.
Speaker 1: Over the twentieth century, scientists discovered a vast array of
Speaker 1: gene drives in nature, but it was only in the
Speaker 1: beginning of this century that they began to seriously think
Speaker 1: about how they might harness the power of gene drives.
Speaker 1: Austin Burt was the one who laid out in principle
Speaker 1: the idea that if there were a way to control
Speaker 1: this natural process, then indeed you would have in your
Speaker 1: hands something that could control the gene frequency in populations.
Speaker 1: My name is Austin Burt, and I'm a professor of
Speaker 1: evolutionary genetics here at Imperial College, London. Austin's an expert
Speaker 1: in selfish genes, genes that cheat mandilion inheritance. Things that
Speaker 1: show gene drive or similar sorts of behavior, and all
Speaker 1: the other sorts of weird and wonderful genes out there
Speaker 1: are able to spread through populations not because they increase
Speaker 1: the survival or reproduction of the organism, but because they're
Speaker 1: distorting transmission to their own advantage. He became very interested
Speaker 1: in using gene drives for the benefit of public health. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in ades mosquitoes, which is the factor for
Speaker 1: a yellow fever and dany, there is an actually occurring
Speaker 1: selfish element on the Y chromosome, the male determining part
Speaker 1: of the genome, that gets into five percent or so
Speaker 1: of the progeny, and so it has the potential then
Speaker 1: to spread through a population, and as it does so,
Speaker 1: distort the sex ratio of the population to be more
Speaker 1: and more male biased. That's worth reiterating. A naturally occurring
Speaker 1: gene drive in mosquitoes turn ninety five percent of the
Speaker 1: male and that caught people's attention. Because male mosquitoes don't
Speaker 1: bite people, they don't transmit the disease, and so the
Speaker 1: idea was that you might be able to use that
Speaker 1: sort of elopment to control the diseases spread by those
Speaker 1: mosquitoes diseases like malaria. Unfortunately, gene drives in animals tend
Speaker 1: to use specialized tricks, many of which still aren't fully understood.
Speaker 1: The best gene drive to engineer would be based on
Speaker 1: simple principles, and you'd most likely find them in simple organisms.
Speaker 1: As luck would have it, That's what Austin studied. My
Speaker 1: first grant was to study the selfish genetic elements of yeasts.
Speaker 1: The best known gene drive in yeast exploits the fact
Speaker 1: that chromosomes come in pairs. So here's the trick. The
Speaker 1: gene drive occurs at a specific spot on a specific chromosome,
Speaker 1: and it encodes the instructions for an enzyme called a
Speaker 1: homing endonuclease. The sole purpose of that enzyme is to
Speaker 1: make a cut at the exact same spot on any
Speaker 1: other copy of the chromosome that doesn't already have the
Speaker 1: gene drive. When a cell detects that cut, it fills
Speaker 1: it in with the genetic information from the matching spot
Speaker 1: on the uncut chromosome, and presto chain show the cell
Speaker 1: inserts a copy of the gene drive into that spot
Speaker 1: on the chromosome. When I was reading about this, I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so if that was actually then we could instead use
Speaker 1: that same sort of approach to change them to recognize
Speaker 1: mosquito sequences and then using that to knock out a
Speaker 1: gene that's essential for the survival or reproduction of the mosquito,
Speaker 1: and so suppress the population that way. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, Austin published a paper in the Proceedings of
Speaker 1: the Royal Society describing this brilliant idea. In principle, gene
Speaker 1: drives could be used to suppress a population, say decreasing
Speaker 1: the fertility of mosquitos, or to alter a population, say
Speaker 1: adding a gene that would prevent the malaria parasite from
Speaker 1: growing in the mosquito. But there was one hitch, the
Speaker 1: homing end. The nuclease in yeast recognizes only one specific
Speaker 1: DNA sequence. To engineer new gene drives, you'd need to
Speaker 1: be able to reprogram them to recognize different sequences. It
Speaker 1: was difficult to get the enzymes to be recognized new
Speaker 1: sequences to recognize mosquito sequences as opposed to E sequences,
Speaker 1: It would take another ten years before the solution emerged.
Speaker 1: It turned out to involve another system that accomplished the
Speaker 1: same thing in a very different way. The system was
Speaker 1: called Crisper. Chapter three, A Shining, Marvelous Future. Crisper is
Speaker 1: a kind of immune system that bacteria used to protect
Speaker 1: themselves against viruses. Crisper uses an enzyme to cut the
Speaker 1: virus's DNA. But what's amazing is that the enzyme doesn't
Speaker 1: have a fixed target. It's programmable. The bacteria create instructions
Speaker 1: based on past viral infections. The Crisper enzyme uses these
Speaker 1: instructions to search for matching the A sequence and then
Speaker 1: cuts it. It took twenty years and dozens of scientists
Speaker 1: around the world to understand exactly how Crisper works, but
Speaker 1: once they did, scientists figured out how to use its
Speaker 1: ability to target DNA sequences to create a technology to
Speaker 1: edit the genetic code inside living cells, from yeast to humans.
Speaker 1: Genome editing has made a huge splash, including the award
Speaker 1: of Nobel Prize last month to two scientists for their
Speaker 1: work on Crisper. Crisper has so many potential applications. Medical
Speaker 1: scientists realized that it held the prospect of fixing mutations
Speaker 1: in patients with severe diseases, and Austin Bert realized that
Speaker 1: this new technology could turn his idea of gene drives
Speaker 1: from dream into practical reality. Austin had been working for
Speaker 1: the last decade trying to engineer existing gene drives from
Speaker 1: organisms like yeast, and that was just a hideously complicated
Speaker 1: and difficult endeavor that wasn't getting all that far. Crisper
Speaker 1: was the perfect tool for enabling gene drive. This is
Speaker 1: biologist Kevin Esfeld, who was the first person to propose
Speaker 1: a specific design for a Crisper based gene drive. I'm
Speaker 1: an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, where I
Speaker 1: direct the Sculpting Evolution Group, and our job is to
Speaker 1: cultivate wisdom through ecological and evolutionary engineering. Kevin's interest in
Speaker 1: sculpting evolutions started early when he read Michael Crichton's nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety novel Jurassic Park. The mere notion that we might
Speaker 1: be able to resurrect dinosaurs through genetic engineering was just
Speaker 1: mind boggling. And even more so, there's this notion at
Speaker 1: the park was a synthetic ecosystem built to host creatures
Speaker 1: that live nowhere else us in the world. That's an
Speaker 1: incredible idea that we can potentially make our own ecosystems.
Speaker 1: How old were you when your address park? Oh, God,
Speaker 1: probably eight or nine. At a very young age, you
Speaker 1: might say, I knew what I wanted to do with
Speaker 1: my life. I wanted to understand how genetics made organisms
Speaker 1: and ecosystems the way they are, and I was interested
Speaker 1: in tinkering with them in order to better understand the
Speaker 1: answer to that question. Kevin remembers the moment when it
Speaker 1: dawned on him that Crisper would make it practical to
Speaker 1: engineer gene drives. He immediately read all of Austin's papers.
Speaker 1: The first day was purelation, thinking about all the amazing
Speaker 1: things you could do. You were thinking that applications already.
Speaker 1: One is human health, things like malarias just a semiasis dangey.
Speaker 1: It's spread by mosquito, lime disease, tick born illness, as mosquito,
Speaker 1: boorn illness, as parasites, you name it. Number two is
Speaker 1: environmental preservation, and then there's agriculture. Because instead of spraying
Speaker 1: nasty poisons on ours in order to get rid of
Speaker 1: the pests that eat them, how about we program the
Speaker 1: pests to dislike the taste. This is potentially a much
Speaker 1: more elegant way of solving ecological problems than poisons and bulldozers.
Speaker 1: In short, suppression gene drives aimed at suppressing the population
Speaker 1: of a dangerous or invasive species could provide a general
Speaker 1: approach to conquer terrible parasites and restore natural environments. To
Speaker 1: say that Kevin was excited would be an understatement. The
Speaker 1: possibilities of a shining, marvelous future were just exploding all
Speaker 1: around me like fireworks. Kevin published his proposal about how
Speaker 1: to build a crisper based gene drive in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Within a year, scientific papers began reporting functioning gene drives,
Speaker 1: first in yeast, then fruit flies, and then in mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: Beyond Kevin's favorite applications, some people are thinking about gene
Speaker 1: drives as a way to help nate sure adapt rapidly
Speaker 1: to some of the devastating effects of climate change. My
Speaker 1: name's Natalie Chefler. I'm a molecular biologist, and I recently
Speaker 1: founded an initiative called Editing Nature, which tries to integrate
Speaker 1: diverse worldviews and perspectives to steer responsible development of genetic
Speaker 1: technologies for the environment. Natalie first became interested in gene
Speaker 1: drives because she was frustrated with the methods that were
Speaker 1: being used to get rid of specific invasive species. In Canada,
Speaker 1: where Natalie's from ash trees were disappearing at a frightening
Speaker 1: pace because they were being destroyed by invasive beetles originally
Speaker 1: from Asia. Ecologists had started considering ways to get rid
Speaker 1: of these beetles, and they pitched the idea of importing
Speaker 1: Russian wasps to prey on the Asian beetles. I was like,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? This doesn't make Eddie sense and
Speaker 1: so and so I just started thinking that there must
Speaker 1: be bio tech options. That very year, Kevin Esvelt and
Speaker 1: his group had published reports on using crisper based gene
Speaker 1: drives to change wild species. And that was sort of
Speaker 1: the Aha moment where I thought, Okay, so people are
Speaker 1: looking at using genetic engineering to alter wild species. This
Speaker 1: is really exciting because it could provide a solution for
Speaker 1: these really huge challenges that we're facing. Among those challenges,
Speaker 1: Natalie points to what's happening to coral reefs. So we're
Speaker 1: seeing a huge decline in coral reef health right now,
Speaker 1: in large part because ocean temperatures are rising. Oceans are
Speaker 1: becoming more acidic and that's causing a lot of stress
Speaker 1: to the coral. It's happening really quickly and pretty extensively.
Speaker 1: White of coral reefs matter. I always see them as
Speaker 1: it was like the forests of the sea. So they
Speaker 1: create huge amount of habitat for many marine fish. Many
Speaker 1: people's livelihoods depend on the fish that depend on coral reef,
Speaker 1: and so there's been estimates in the trillions and trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars that would be lost if the coral were
Speaker 1: to continue to decline at the rates that they do,
Speaker 1: So losing all the coral would be like losing all
Speaker 1: the forests in a way. That's somehow I think about it.
Speaker 1: In contrast to suppression gene drives, Natalie thinks that alteration
Speaker 1: gene drives, ones that would spread beneficial genes throughout a population,
Speaker 1: could make some coals more resilient to climate change. And
Speaker 1: there is research starting to come out showing that certain
Speaker 1: mutations and certain genes can be protective against things like
Speaker 1: acidification or high temperatures, or allow the coral to dat better.
Speaker 1: And so the idea would be that you could use
Speaker 1: crisper gene editing to rewrite the genome of a coral
Speaker 1: to be able to express these resiliency inducing genes. If
Speaker 1: you were to introduce a gene drive as well, then
Speaker 1: that would also allow you to release into the wild,
Speaker 1: into the ocean and allow that to spread. Chapter four
Speaker 1: anopolies Gambii. Of all the possible uses of gene drives,
Speaker 1: none is more compelling than Austin Bird's original idea of
Speaker 1: controlling the spread of malaria. According to the World's Health Organization,
Speaker 1: more than four hundred thousand people die from malaria each year.
Speaker 1: That's close to one death every minute. Most are children
Speaker 1: under five. Austin Bird ended up creating Target Malaria, a
Speaker 1: not for profit research collaboration with a mission of developing
Speaker 1: and sharing genetic technologies to help stop the spread of
Speaker 1: malaria in Sub Saharan Africa. Target Malaria is targeting several
Speaker 1: mosquito species, including Anaphly's gambii, the mosquito responsible for most
Speaker 1: malaria cases in Sub Saharan Africa, which malaria expert Diane
Speaker 1: Worth described earlier. Among many possible designs, a simple approach
Speaker 1: would be to create a pression gene drive that causes
Speaker 1: mosquitos to produce mostly male offspring. The strategy is actually
Speaker 1: a two fer. First, as Austin Burt noted earlier, male
Speaker 1: mosquitoes don't bite people, so they can't transmit malaria. Second,
Speaker 1: the lopsided sex ratio should cause of the population to
Speaker 1: dramatically crash and perhaps be eliminated in some areas. Target
Speaker 1: Malaria is headquartered in the UK, where Austin works, but
Speaker 1: it has research teams in many places, including Mali, Uganda
Speaker 1: and Burkina Fossio. I spoke via Skype with one of
Speaker 1: Target Malaria's lead researchers in Burkina Fassio. My name is
Speaker 1: on A medical entomologist, Doctor Abdulaye Diabate, was born and
Speaker 1: raised in a rural area of southwest Burkina Fassio, and
Speaker 1: he is intimately familiar with the disease, the leading cause
Speaker 1: of all There is absolutely no doubt about that this
Speaker 1: is a really very big issue for us, as myself
Speaker 1: as a kid experienced several episodes of malaria. All my
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters cinematically, every single one got malaria. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a real treatment right away, it can
Speaker 1: quickly need to get and even remember myself when I
Speaker 1: was still a kid long time ago, I have stuck her,
Speaker 1: you know, from malaria, and I could really see from
Speaker 1: the eyes of my parents that they were really very scared,
Speaker 1: but because they knew that anytime they could lose me.
Speaker 1: Fortunately I made it through. But as a parent today
Speaker 1: I have the same experiencing of my kids. Abdulas dedicated
Speaker 1: his life to malaria prevention. He did his PhD in
Speaker 1: France and postdoctoral research at the US National Institutes of
Speaker 1: Health before returning to Burkina Fossil. I felt really that
Speaker 1: I came to the US, you know, to learn, and
Speaker 1: I have to come back home, you know, to give
Speaker 1: back to my community and as this is really my
Speaker 1: dream and my hope that I can come up to
Speaker 1: be something that can really help not only but the
Speaker 1: entire Africa to make sure that we can get wead
Speaker 1: once for all of malaria. When he first returned home,
Speaker 1: the most promising method of malaria eradication was to target
Speaker 1: mosquitoes by using insecticide treated nets, and that tool was
Speaker 1: pretty successful, at least initially. We were really really excited,
Speaker 1: you know when we saw the data, because we had
Speaker 1: a really fantastic data showing that because a clear impact
Speaker 1: on a little transmission. But soon researchers started to see
Speaker 1: problems with the method we farted, you know, to see insecitary.
Speaker 1: This sounds you know, coming in and we wished a
Speaker 1: point where most of those are no longer susceptible. As
Speaker 1: he began desperately looking for new tools, he came across
Speaker 1: the gene drive proposal from Austin Bird and Target Malaria
Speaker 1: and began working with the team. My hope really is
Speaker 1: that we are able, you know, to come up with
Speaker 1: some really good intervention tool that concident and then have
Speaker 1: a really really good impact on malaria. Gooden in Africa.
Speaker 1: Target Malaria is still five to ten years away from
Speaker 1: testing an actual gene drive in the field, but the
Speaker 1: excitement is palpable. Controlling malaria in Africa saving four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand lives a year would be a big, big deal.
Speaker 1: A gene drives clearly work in the lab, So what
Speaker 1: are people waiting for? Why aren't we just releasing gene
Speaker 1: drives against mosquitoes and lots of other targets as well?
Speaker 1: What could possibly go wrong? Chapter five? What could possibly
Speaker 1: go wrong? In thinking about what could go wrong, many
Speaker 1: scientists use terms like unintended consequences, molecular biologist Natalie Koefler, Well,
Speaker 1: she puts it differently. Okay, So people are looking at
Speaker 1: using genetic engineering to alter wild species. This is really exciting,
Speaker 1: huge challenges that we're facing, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: literally in the same breath, I was also just like,
Speaker 1: holy crap, if this isn't used properly, this could be
Speaker 1: really damaging to our planet. To prevent that, Natalie founded
Speaker 1: an organization called the Editing Nature Initiative. For his part,
Speaker 1: Kevin Esfeld came to a similar realization, although it took
Speaker 1: him just a little bit longer. Soon after his day
Speaker 1: of euphoria, his vision of a shining, marvelous future with
Speaker 1: fireworks exploding, Kevin says he fell into utter despair, total paranoia,
Speaker 1: of dark visions of horrible, horrific misuse and weaponization. What
Speaker 1: worries Kevin, Natalie and others is the gene drives actually
Speaker 1: might be so easy to make and work so well
Speaker 1: that things might get out of hand, Which means if
Speaker 1: a crisper based gene drive system will spread in the wild,
Speaker 1: probably the most populations of that species that are connected
Speaker 1: by any kind of gene flow, then that means that
Speaker 1: individual people could potentially single handedly edit entire species. Suppose
Speaker 1: you release a gene drive and so the rat population
Speaker 1: of a remote Pacific island. How can you be sure
Speaker 1: that it won't actually get off the island? And the
Speaker 1: rodents got there in the first place, rights we should
Speaker 1: have safely assume that they can also get off. If
Speaker 1: one of those rodents stows away on a ship, like
Speaker 1: the ones that stowed away on Captain Cook's ship, It's
Speaker 1: possible that the gene drive could eventually spread throughout the
Speaker 1: entire species of black rats around the world. Rats are
Speaker 1: invasive species in some places, but they're an important part
Speaker 1: of the ecosystem elsewhere. So what happens if you unintentionally alter, suppress,
Speaker 1: or in the worst case, wipe out a species, I
Speaker 1: asked evolutionary ecologist Jim Collins, who co chaired the US
Speaker 1: National Academy of Science study published in twenty sixteen. You
Speaker 1: do not want to be just reaching into ecosystems and
Speaker 1: arbitrarily removing species. Humanity has done lots of that, and
Speaker 1: there have been these unintended consequences that are not good.
Speaker 1: Can you give this a couple examples of that. There
Speaker 1: are any number of instances in which we've we've removed
Speaker 1: top predators, for example, in ocean systems in which top
Speaker 1: predators have been fished out, and then you can wind
Speaker 1: up with the ecosystem that is greatly diminished. It's largely
Speaker 1: algae and jellyfishes by the time you've taken off the
Speaker 1: top predators in the system. What about unintentionally wiping out
Speaker 1: the mosquito species that carry malaria? Could that disrupt den
Speaker 1: eco system? Well, there are plenty of things that eat mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: and so hypothetically, yes, there could be effects. Do we
Speaker 1: know exactly what they are yet? No. Austin Bird, who
Speaker 1: founded Target Malaria, has thought a lot about the effects
Speaker 1: of suppressing mosquito populations. He's asked, are mosquitoes a keystone
Speaker 1: species on which other organisms depend? According to Austin, experts
Speaker 1: think not predators that eat mosquitoes, who appear to eat
Speaker 1: anyat flying insects. He's also asked, if mosquitoes disappeared from
Speaker 1: a region, would an insect transmitting an even worse disease
Speaker 1: take its place. Well, it's hard to imagine, because mosquitoes
Speaker 1: and malaria are amongst humanity's worst scourges. Still, Austin says
Speaker 1: we should take nothing for granted, and mosquitoes are a
Speaker 1: relatively easy case. You'd have to answer the same question
Speaker 1: for every possible use of gene drives. But as Jim
Speaker 1: Collins's National Academy report notes, there's another problem. Beyond unintended consequences,
Speaker 1: there's the disturbing possibility that someone might deliberately use gene
Speaker 1: drives to cause harm. It could be used maliciously. A
Speaker 1: bad actor could decide to try to develop a gene
Speaker 1: drive system that might target some part of the food
Speaker 1: supply in a country. The individual could decide to introduce traits,
Speaker 1: undesirable traits, and other kinds of organisms and cause lots
Speaker 1: of mischief. What would be the most likely targets for
Speaker 1: it Organisms that reproduce sexually, that have a relatively short
Speaker 1: generation time. You'd want this thing to turn over pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: so you're probably not going to use a gene drive
Speaker 1: system for long lived animals larger vertebrates, let's say cattle,
Speaker 1: But for smaller organisms that turn over pretty quickly, maybe poultry,
Speaker 1: you might be able to think about using something like
Speaker 1: a gene drive system. In short, Jim says, a bad
Speaker 1: actor might try to use gene drives as a bioweapon
Speaker 1: to devastate agriculture in a country. Chapter six, daisy chains.
Speaker 1: As Kevin s Field thought more, he stumbled across a
Speaker 1: big problem with his initial design for gene drives. It
Speaker 1: would be too risky even to run field trials to
Speaker 1: test the technology. Why because if even a single organism
Speaker 1: escaped from the test area, well, the gene drive might
Speaker 1: invade the entire species. The problem with the full power
Speaker 1: version is it has everything it needs to copy it
Speaker 1: self forever, in every generation. So Kevin got to work
Speaker 1: designing gene drives that couldn't spread forever self exhausting gene drives.
Speaker 1: He designs something he named a daisy drive. Every link
Speaker 1: in this daisy chain is the equivalent of like one
Speaker 1: gallon of genetic fuel. And you burn genetic fuel over generations,
Speaker 1: and when you run out, it stops. Daisy drives involve
Speaker 1: a chain of genetic elements, say abcde, each inserted into
Speaker 1: a different chromosome. A copies B to make sure it's
Speaker 1: inherited by all the offspring. B copies C, see copies dance,
Speaker 1: so on. But nothing's driving A. It's inherited by only
Speaker 1: half the offspring. So when a is lost, there's nothing
Speaker 1: copying B, so it's eventually lost, and so on. When
Speaker 1: you introduce a daisy chain into a large population, it
Speaker 1: should eventually peter out. And Kevin has more tricks up
Speaker 1: his sleeve. He's designed a gene drive that's engineered not
Speaker 1: to spread beyond the geographical area in which you released it.
Speaker 1: He calls it a threshold drive. It mimics one of
Speaker 1: the ways that reproductive barriers arise in the wild by
Speaker 1: using genetic rearrangements to make interbreeding less efficient. Kevin thinks
Speaker 1: of these tricks will make it possible to do much
Speaker 1: safer field trials. But still, what if a drive spreads
Speaker 1: despite these safety features. Well, Kevin says, you can always
Speaker 1: create a new gene drive to spread and overrite the
Speaker 1: first one. He calls it a restoration drive. Now a
Speaker 1: lot of people say, wait a minute, you can't rely
Speaker 1: on the same technology that just went wrong. But hold
Speaker 1: on a second. If the problem is what we did
Speaker 1: to the species, then using another method that successfully spread
Speaker 1: a change to the whole species to successfully spread another
Speaker 1: change to the whole species is perfectly valid engineering. Even
Speaker 1: as Kevin works to devise solutions daisy drives threshold drives,
Speaker 1: restoration drives. He knows he can't imagine everything. I still
Speaker 1: assume that evolution is cleverer than we are. It's going
Speaker 1: to have some trick up at sleeve. This is like
Speaker 1: you are fighting the tide, or you're fighting a blind,
Speaker 1: idiot alien god. To use my preferred conception of what
Speaker 1: evolution really is. It's like the story that inspired Kevin
Speaker 1: to go into biotechnology. Jurassic Park in the classic nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three film, Doctor Ian Malcolm played by Jeff Goldblum,
Speaker 1: is a mathematician who specializes in chaos theory. Early in
Speaker 1: the film, he presciently calls out the park designers for
Speaker 1: the hubris in thinking they can control the dinosaur population.
Speaker 1: Know they're all female. We control their chromosomes. It's really
Speaker 1: not that difficult, John. The kind of control your attempting
Speaker 1: is it's not possible. As if there's one thing the
Speaker 1: history of evolution has tossed that life will not be contained.
Speaker 1: Life breaks free, It expands to new territories, and it
Speaker 1: crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously. But no, there
Speaker 1: it is. You're implying that a group composed entirely of
Speaker 1: female animals, will breed. No, I'm simply saying that life
Speaker 1: finds a way, wife finds a way. If Kevin knows
Speaker 1: if we want the potential benefits that gene drives offer,
Speaker 1: we have to work hard to be sure that life
Speaker 1: doesn't find a way. What I'm worried about is the
Speaker 1: loss of public trust when scientists accidentally engineer a whole species.
Speaker 1: Whatever they do can be undone except for the fact
Speaker 1: that it would be become very well known through the
Speaker 1: media that scientists accidentally turned to species into GMOs. So
Speaker 1: that's why you're very concerned to get this right. You
Speaker 1: don't think that this really will go wrong. And you
Speaker 1: do have this ultimate safety switch, which is send another
Speaker 1: gene drive to go after the first gene drive. But
Speaker 1: if we have to do that, we've already lost public
Speaker 1: trust in the technology. So we better never have to
Speaker 1: do that. Chapter seven Skeptics. While everyone is in favor
Speaker 1: of eradicating malaria, which kills four hundred thousand people a year,
Speaker 1: some people are pretty skeptical about using gene drives to
Speaker 1: do it. I personally would not be in favor of
Speaker 1: gene drives. This is Zarahmulu. I'm a journalist and documentary
Speaker 1: filmmaker from Kenya and I'm currently based in Montreal. Zara
Speaker 1: has covered a wide range of time topics that affect Africa,
Speaker 1: including an investigative portrait of a multinational gold mine in Tanzania. Recently,
Speaker 1: she began collaborating with an organization called the ETC Group.
Speaker 1: It's a small organization that works with civil society across
Speaker 1: different parts of the world and they do work on
Speaker 1: the impact of new technologies on biodiversity and human rights
Speaker 1: and agriculture, and so I came to learn about gene
Speaker 1: drives through ETC Groups through collaborating with them. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Zara made a short film and wrote an article casting
Speaker 1: doubt on target Malaria's efforts in Burkina Faso. For starters,
Speaker 1: she challenges the motives of people working on gene drives.
Speaker 1: The question to ask, is our gene drives really about
Speaker 1: public health and conservation or other other interests and other
Speaker 1: other ways that agribusiness companies can make a profit from
Speaker 1: gene drives. Why do we really need gene drives, what
Speaker 1: are they really for and who is going to benefit
Speaker 1: ultimately from the development of this technology. It's very nice
Speaker 1: to think that people really care about the lives of Africans.
Speaker 1: But I think this story is a lot more complex
Speaker 1: than that. Zara also argues that Africa doesn't really need
Speaker 1: gene drives to conquer malaria. I come from a country
Speaker 1: where people contract malaria regularly. People die in my country
Speaker 1: from malaria. We do need to fight malaria, and it's
Speaker 1: a terrible disease. No one's going to disagree with that. However,
Speaker 1: it's also important to know that Paraguay eliminated malaria recently,
Speaker 1: Tri Lanka eliminated malaria. Algeria and Argentina have just been
Speaker 1: declared malaria free, and so there are ways in which
Speaker 1: countries have successfully eradicated malaria without having to employ very
Speaker 1: risky technologies like gene drives. I asked malaria expert Diane
Speaker 1: Worth whether she thought malaria eradication in those countries provided
Speaker 1: a useful model for sub Saharan Africa. She was skeptical.
Speaker 1: Algeria it's a desert, mosquitoes need water to breed. Paraguay
Speaker 1: very small number of cases, probably eliminated years ago, but
Speaker 1: finally certified. Argentina same story, relatively little malaria. Ever, Sri
Speaker 1: Lanka is an island they don't have to deal with
Speaker 1: importation from surrounding countries. They have a very strong healthcare system,
Speaker 1: so they're able to identify early every case of malaria,
Speaker 1: and they have a mosquito vector that isn't very robust.
Speaker 1: Diane argued that malaria in Sub Saharan Africa represents a
Speaker 1: very different challenge. They're different mosquitos, there's different ecology, there's
Speaker 1: different burden of disease in the population. In many places
Speaker 1: in Sub Saharan Africa, children have malaria for half the
Speaker 1: year and serve as reservoirs for transmission. The mosquito in
Speaker 1: Africa is a mosquito that only bites humans. That means
Speaker 1: that's the most effective transmitter in most of Africa, and
Speaker 1: so therefore detecting early, preventing and getting treatment for the
Speaker 1: disease represents a challenge. Whatever you think about the need
Speaker 1: for gene drives, Czara's key issue is very important. It's
Speaker 1: in the title of her film, A question of consent
Speaker 1: Before gene drives get released into the wild. Who needs
Speaker 1: to say yes? Chapter eight, charm l Shake to Nantucket.
Speaker 1: What to do about gene drives is a question that's
Speaker 1: been hotly debated by the governing body for the Convention
Speaker 1: on Biological Diversity in international agreements among one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety six countries on preserving, sustaining and sharing the benefits
Speaker 1: of biodiversity. In December twenty eighteen, the group met in
Speaker 1: Charmel Shaikh, Egypt. Natalie Koefler, the founder of Editing Nature,
Speaker 1: traveled to Egypt to deliver a talk. At the meeting,
Speaker 1: many representatives from Target Malaria were present, and then many
Speaker 1: representatives from several environmental groups, and those include environmental justice
Speaker 1: advocacy sort of technological white watchdogs groups like ETC Group.
Speaker 1: The group of the NGOs of the meeting, including the
Speaker 1: ETC Group, called for a total moratorium on gene drives,
Speaker 1: not just undeploying them, but even studying them in the laboratory.
Speaker 1: They are calling for a moratorium on research, so basically
Speaker 1: for all research to halt, which I believe is just
Speaker 1: somewhat ridiculous. I don't think there's a way you just
Speaker 1: stop people trying to understand more. And if the point
Speaker 1: is that this could be something that could be of
Speaker 1: great benefit, you would want to be able to study
Speaker 1: it more and make sure you can understand what those
Speaker 1: benefits or risks could be stopping research. To me, seems your.
Speaker 1: The Governing Body eventually rejected the call for a moratorium. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: Zara Mulu saw the meeting as a partial victory, pointing
Speaker 1: to the closing statement by the Governing Body, which she
Speaker 1: said requires organizations seeking to release gene drive organisms to
Speaker 1: obtain the quote free prior and informed consent of potentially
Speaker 1: affected communities. So it has to be free, prior and
Speaker 1: informed consent before these releases go ahead. So who exactly
Speaker 1: do you ask for consent? Elected officials? Anyone who might
Speaker 1: potentially be affected? How do you even know everyone who
Speaker 1: might be affected? Well, Kevin Esfeld has been wrestling with
Speaker 1: these issues and a project he's working on to fight
Speaker 1: lime disease in New England. Lime disease is awful. Lime
Speaker 1: disease is disgusting. I don't like ticks, so I figured, well,
Speaker 1: what if we decide to prevent lime disease caused by
Speaker 1: a bacteria. Lime disease can lead to serious long term symptoms,
Speaker 1: including pain, severe headaches, and numbness. Humans get lime disease
Speaker 1: from being bitten by infected ticks. And how do the
Speaker 1: ticks pick up the bacteria? Most ticks get infected when
Speaker 1: they bite a white footed mouse, so what if the
Speaker 1: white footed mice were immune. Kevin's big idea was to
Speaker 1: take the mice that had developed antibodies against lime disease,
Speaker 1: read out the genetic instructions that encode those antibodies, and
Speaker 1: use a gene drive to spread those instructions throughout the
Speaker 1: entire white footed mouse population so that the mice get
Speaker 1: born immune. For a number of reasons, Kevin decided the
Speaker 1: best place to test the idea would be Nantucket and
Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard, former whaling communities turned summer resorts in Massachusetts. First,
Speaker 1: they have high rates of lime disease, about half the
Speaker 1: people who grow up there have had acute episodes. Second,
Speaker 1: they're islands, so a gene drive wouldn't spread as easily.
Speaker 1: And third they had in place a mechanism for consent.
Speaker 1: New England has this tradition of town hall democracy, in
Speaker 1: which communities actually get together and discuss important problems. So
Speaker 1: Kevin reached out to the boards of health on Nantucket
Speaker 1: and Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket got back to us first
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, come to our meeting. So we took
Speaker 1: the ferry and I explained how we might be able
Speaker 1: to do this. But if we were going to do it,
Speaker 1: the community would need to tell us what to do.
Speaker 1: Are they interested enough for us to bother and if so,
Speaker 1: which option would they prefer? What they say, this sounds
Speaker 1: really interesting, We think you should begin research. How many
Speaker 1: more meetings have you had after that first meeting? Oh? Oh,
Speaker 1: well over a dozen meetings on both islands. And as
Speaker 1: this changed the way you think about the experiment, it
Speaker 1: has so people who live there know much more about
Speaker 1: the environment than I do, or in collectively, more than
Speaker 1: any single scientist does. They could notice something that we haven't.
Speaker 1: And so if you want to make this kind of
Speaker 1: project as safe as possible, you invite everyone to poke
Speaker 1: holes in your pet theory. Kevin isn't actually proposing to
Speaker 1: start by releasing gene drives on the whole of Nantucket
Speaker 1: or Martha's Vineyard. Instead, he's hoping to try it on
Speaker 1: some very little islands nearby. Fortunately, there are several owners
Speaker 1: of islands who have volunteered their islands for this project
Speaker 1: because they're tired of going out there over the summer
Speaker 1: and getting bitten by ticks and having a take doxy
Speaker 1: cycling these would be little islands, uninhabited except for occasionally
Speaker 1: a few summer residents, all of whom have bought in.
Speaker 1: So what's your scenario for releasing gene drive mice on
Speaker 1: a little island. We're considering the possibility of using a
Speaker 1: form of threshold drive That might be the very first
Speaker 1: field trial. Target best case scenario would be three years
Speaker 1: if it turns out the standard methods in lab mice
Speaker 1: transfer pretty readily. According to a recent update from Kevin,
Speaker 1: most islanders are comfortable with the idea of releasing genetically
Speaker 1: engineered mice, provided that all the DNA components come from
Speaker 1: within the mouse species. Many, though, are bothered by the
Speaker 1: idea of mixing DNA from different species, which would of
Speaker 1: course rule out a crisper based chain drive at least
Speaker 1: to start Chapter nine, consent or consensus. So what to
Speaker 1: do about fighting malaria in West Africa? The problem is
Speaker 1: far more urgent than lyme disease, which is almost never fatal,
Speaker 1: and the issues around consent are far more complicated. Again,
Speaker 1: Zaramolu is highly critical of target Malaria's process, which she
Speaker 1: views as secretive. So I guess a question PAPS for
Speaker 1: them is what constitutes consent to them. What have they
Speaker 1: done to ensure that the process of free, prior and
Speaker 1: informed consent is in place in Burkina Fasso following the
Speaker 1: decision at the Convention on Biological Diversity. When I spoke
Speaker 1: to people in Burkina Fasso, they suddenly were not informed.
Speaker 1: People need to be informed, not just at the village
Speaker 1: level where these releases are going to take place, but
Speaker 1: also in the cities. Civil society needs to be informed.
Speaker 1: I would say the whole country and even the whole
Speaker 1: region needs to be informed because this is a very
Speaker 1: risky technology whose consequences are not known. In Czar's film,
Speaker 1: she interviews about a dozen people in the regional capital,
Speaker 1: where Target Malaria's lab is located, and in small communities
Speaker 1: where Target malarias someday hopes to test gene drives. The
Speaker 1: people interviewed mostly say they haven't been told about the research.
Speaker 1: Some say they distrust GMOs, citing Burkina Fasso's experiences with
Speaker 1: genetically modified cotton, and some worry the gene drives will
Speaker 1: have side effects. According to one woman interviewed quote it
Speaker 1: will kill us. Sara says Target Malaria hasn't accepted the
Speaker 1: concept of informed consent. Target Malaria talks about stakeholder engagement.
Speaker 1: They talk about community engagement, but they don't talk about consent.
Speaker 1: She also says Target Malaria shouldn't be the only group
Speaker 1: providing information about gene drives because their advocates for the
Speaker 1: new technology. Information needs to be out there, information that's
Speaker 1: not just from Target Malaria, but also independent information from researchers,
Speaker 1: from scientists. I asked Abdulaye Diabate, the Burkina Faso native
Speaker 1: and Target Malaria scientist, about his organization's efforts. It's extremely
Speaker 1: important that you have to work in full competenty, you know,
Speaker 1: with the different community and want communities not just about
Speaker 1: the village is where you're doing the work. It's you know,
Speaker 1: the religious authority, in the media. We also even with
Speaker 1: the civil society. So you have a willy to make
Speaker 1: sure that you have worked clearly in all these people.
Speaker 1: Abdula says that he and his colleagues meet regularly with
Speaker 1: local residents as well as citizens and other parts of
Speaker 1: the country to help people understanding drives. They've developed a
Speaker 1: lexicon to translate the scientific words into the local languages.
Speaker 1: They've also invited residents to visit the laboratory to see
Speaker 1: how they feed the mosquitoes and explain their experiments, and
Speaker 1: he says they've put in place a grievance mechanism anything,
Speaker 1: that these people are religion, that in the villages, I'm
Speaker 1: not happy about that they have any customs. And now
Speaker 1: we come and we see sit down with them and
Speaker 1: then we can talk and and this is how really
Speaker 1: you build for us, you know, with the villages. Target
Speaker 1: Malaria has also worked with the Burkina Fossil government, getting
Speaker 1: permission from the National Biosafety Agency for small scale releases
Speaker 1: of non gene drive mosquitoes, and with the African Union's
Speaker 1: Scientific arm which issued a favorable report about the potential
Speaker 1: for gene drives. Still, Abdulay acknowledges there will never be
Speaker 1: unanimity about gene drives. It's really excellutely difficult continual technology
Speaker 1: to have everybody having, you know, the same opinion. That
Speaker 1: being fair, it's clear that the Buchina is really quite bad.
Speaker 1: So we're almost about, you know, seventeen to eighteen million people,
Speaker 1: so you cannot wish out to anyone everybody. So we
Speaker 1: have done what we could do. Faith to faith with
Speaker 1: people and beyond that. Now we have been working also
Speaker 1: with the media, either through the TV or through also
Speaker 1: the written paper, so to mixed that the information and
Speaker 1: really help that that people can you get the right information.
Speaker 1: And then we open our door for anyone who really
Speaker 1: have concerns about anything. And I can say that we
Speaker 1: have rushed out to a lot of people. Still we
Speaker 1: still have a lot of work to do given Target
Speaker 1: Malaria's engagement activities. I asked Austin Byrd about Zara Mulu's
Speaker 1: criticism that the group doesn't talk about getting quote, informed consent.
Speaker 1: Austin argued that informed consent is the right concept when
Speaker 1: you're performing a medical procedure on an individual patient. But
Speaker 1: he says public health interventions are decided by communities and governments,
Speaker 1: the practice is to work at the community level to
Speaker 1: seek community acceptance or approval. In fact, it turns out
Speaker 1: the statement by the governing Body of the Convention on
Speaker 1: Biological Diversity also endorsed this approach. It called on parties
Speaker 1: to seek either free, prior and informed consent or approval
Speaker 1: and involvement of local communities. In other words, the international
Speaker 1: Statement is open to both approaches. I asked Natalie Koefler
Speaker 1: what she thought about Target Malaria's efforts to inform the public.
Speaker 1: They also run a really significant public engagement initiative in
Speaker 1: the countries that they're looking to release these mosquitoes and eventually,
Speaker 1: and that would be Burkina, Fassa, Amali and Uganda are
Speaker 1: sort of the three countries they're targeting. Target Malaria also
Speaker 1: has significant outreach with government officials within the African Union.
Speaker 1: I have to say I'm impressed by the amount of
Speaker 1: foresight they're using and the transparency they are they are using.
Speaker 1: They're going above and beyond what most technologists have ever
Speaker 1: done in the past. While Natalie applauded Target Malaria's efforts,
Speaker 1: she agreed with Zaramolu on one important point, namely that
Speaker 1: communities can't just rely on Target Malaria to provide information
Speaker 1: or to lead the discussions. It's concerning to me in
Speaker 1: a large, well funded organization is able to sort of
Speaker 1: lunilaterally steer the technology's progress. So there needs to be
Speaker 1: a third party, neutral body that can help to mediate
Speaker 1: this sort of discussions and deliberation and information that would
Speaker 1: be needed to even come to any sort of decision.
Speaker 1: Who is the independent third party who's not either a
Speaker 1: declared advocate trying to release the gene drive or the
Speaker 1: declared NGEO opponent. I mean, quite frankly, that's the sort
Speaker 1: of organization that I'm in the process of trying to create.
Speaker 1: These are really complicated issues, and they really deserve time
Speaker 1: and reflection, an engagement of really diverse voices. Natalie was
Speaker 1: the lead author of an unusual policy article entitled Editing
Speaker 1: Nature Local Roots of Global Governance, published in November twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen and Science, the leading American scientific journal. The article
Speaker 1: calls for the creation of a kind of honest broker
Speaker 1: organization that can convene parties ranging from local communities to
Speaker 1: technologists and geo's and governments to deliberate about proposed uses
Speaker 1: of gene drives. We call for the need to have
Speaker 1: really meaningful locally based engagement around these technologies, but then
Speaker 1: we also call for the need for some sort of
Speaker 1: global coordinating body. The articles a great model of scientists
Speaker 1: scrappling with how society might come together to make decisions
Speaker 1: about whether and when to deploy a new technology. It
Speaker 1: has sixteen co authors, including Jim Collins, who led the
Speaker 1: National Academy study and Kevin Esfeld. I asked Jim Collins
Speaker 1: how something like a global coordinating body might work. For example,
Speaker 1: who would choose the representatives of the local communities. I
Speaker 1: would be in favor of whatever governance structure the local
Speaker 1: community uses to pick its leadership or to pick representatives.
Speaker 1: And yet you're an optimist that this be done. I
Speaker 1: am an optimist that it can be done. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: I think that we want to do it now. You
Speaker 1: want to do it now. You want to work through
Speaker 1: these problems now, so that you're thinking, you've got the time.
Speaker 1: The technology has not been perfected, so we have a
Speaker 1: little bit of breathing room. So this is the time
Speaker 1: to develop these sorts of governance structures. But scientists realize
Speaker 1: that achieving consensus won't be easy. The more people you
Speaker 1: have at the table, the harder it is to find consensus.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a paradox. I think about a lot because
Speaker 1: I'm hot, like full on. I want as many diverse
Speaker 1: voices at the table as we can have. I want
Speaker 1: historically marginalized voices at the table. I even want people
Speaker 1: speaking for nature at the table. And this is going
Speaker 1: to make things complicated, and so maybe we even have
Speaker 1: to think about again differently. This isn't necessarily a yes
Speaker 1: or no. This is more of sort of an informing
Speaker 1: process that can help steer, at least steer the technology
Speaker 1: in a way that's reflective of a broader group of
Speaker 1: people inventing why is ways to manage gene drives may
Speaker 1: ultimately take as much creativity as it took to invent
Speaker 1: gene drives in the first place, and it may take
Speaker 1: some time in that regard. I want to note that
Speaker 1: at the Broad Institute, the research institute I direct, we
Speaker 1: ourselves have had to grapple with what to do about
Speaker 1: gene drives. I mentioned earlier that many scientists had contributed
Speaker 1: to the development of Crisper, the key technology underlying modern
Speaker 1: gene drives. These scientists include some of my colleagues at
Speaker 1: the Broad and, as a result, the Institute as a
Speaker 1: co owner of some of the foundational patents on Crisper.
Speaker 1: We've granted commercial licenses for the use of Crisper for
Speaker 1: many purposes, but the question arose, should we let companies
Speaker 1: license our patents on Crisper for use in gene drives.
Speaker 1: After a lot of discussion, we decided not to do so.
Speaker 1: At least not yet. We thought it would be better
Speaker 1: to wait before granting licenses to help buy time for
Speaker 1: society to decide whether and how to use the technology. Still,
Speaker 1: the clock is ticking. As I was finishing up this episode,
Speaker 1: I called Austin Burt to confirm my recollection the Target
Speaker 1: Malaria was on target to release gene drive mosquitoes in
Speaker 1: about five years. He corrected me. He said Target Malaria
Speaker 1: expected to be ready in five years to submit an
Speaker 1: application asking for permission. What would happen next? He said, Well,
Speaker 1: that would be up to society conclusion. Choose your planet.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Gene drives. They could help
Speaker 1: us restore ecosystems disrupted by invasive species or help critical
Speaker 1: native species withstand climate change. Most importantly, they might save
Speaker 1: millions of lives by suppressing the mosquitoes that spread deadly malaria.
Speaker 1: But the great power of gene drives to spread genetic
Speaker 1: changes throughout a population might make them very hard to control.
Speaker 1: They might spread beyond field tests or intended targets. Can
Speaker 1: tamer versions of gene drives, daisy drives, threshold drives, restoration drives,
Speaker 1: insure safety or are we kidding ourselves? Whatever? We do,
Speaker 1: will life find a way. If we refuse to consider
Speaker 1: gene drives for any purpose, we'd be turning our back
Speaker 1: on a powerful way to tackle malaria. If we do
Speaker 1: want to consider gene drives, communities in Africa will need
Speaker 1: to answer some important questions. Who should be engaged and how,
Speaker 1: who should the discussions, and who gets to make the
Speaker 1: ultimate decision. But it's not just Africa. Similar questions will
Speaker 1: arise throughout the world, including many places in the US,
Speaker 1: from Martha's Vineyard to Maui. So the question is what
Speaker 1: can you do a lot? It turns out you don't
Speaker 1: have to be an expert and you don't have to
Speaker 1: do it alone. Invite friends over virtually or in person
Speaker 1: when it's saved for dinner and debate about what we
Speaker 1: should do, or organize a conversation for a book club
Speaker 1: or a faith group or a campus event. You can
Speaker 1: find lots of resources and ideas at our website Brave
Speaker 1: New Planet dot org. It's time to choose our planet.
Speaker 1: The future is up to us. Brave New Planet is
Speaker 1: a co production of the Broad Institute of mt and
Speaker 1: Harvard Pushkin Industries in the Boston Globe, with support from
Speaker 1: the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our show is produced by
Speaker 1: Rebecca Lee Douglas, with Mary Doo theme song composed by
Speaker 1: Ned Porter, mastering and sound designed by James Garver, fact
Speaker 1: checking by Joseph Fridman, and a Stitt and Enchant. Special
Speaker 1: Thanks to Christine Heenan and Rachel Roberts at Clarendon Communications,
Speaker 1: to Lee McGuire, Kristen Zarelli and Justine Levin Allerhans at
Speaker 1: the Broad, to Milobelle and Heather Faine at Pushkin, and
Speaker 1: to Eli and Edy Brode who made the Broad Institute possible.
Speaker 1: This is brave new Planet. I'm Eric Lander ass