Genetic editing is hailed as the future of medicine as it holds a lot of promise in eradicating the world's most dangerous diseases, such as cancer and leukemia. In fact, China and the United States will have its large-scale trials to treat cancer patients using gene editing. While this holds a lot of promise, there are also warnings regarding its use and one of those threats include the extinction of geniuses in the future.
Just in November this year, a cancer patient in China became the first recipient of modified immune cells which were genetically engineered to kill his lung cancer using the new technology CRISPR. What it does is cut out those unhealthy cells and replace them with new instructions to build better cells.
At present, cancer is the main focus of gene editing but scientists say that the same method will be applied to other genetic diseases in the future.
However, Dr Jim Kozubek, author of Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome with Crispr-Cas9, issued a warning saying that if Aspergers, schizophrenia, or autism will be eliminated it will also eradicate geniuses, like Thomas Edison. That's because most of these illnesses are often associated with creativity and higher intelligence.
Kozubek further added that writers are ten times more likely to be bipolar than the average people while poets have a likelihood of 40 times than the average human being.
He then cited Tennessee Williams almost came into the verge of madness when he was a teenager because he was afraid of the "process of thought." Edison, on the other hand, was kicked out of school because he had a hard time focusing. However, these two men became two of the most brilliant minds in history.
He concluded that such genetic variants are very important elements of the creative process. Furthermore, the positive effects of such genetic traits outweigh the negative.
