God’s Red Pencil? CRISPR and The Three Myths of Precise Genome Editing
For the last seventy years all chemical and biological technologies, from genetic engineering to pesticides, have been built on a myth of precision and specificity. They have all been adopted under the pretense that they would function without side effects or unexpected complications. Yet the extraordinary disasters and repercussions of DDT, leaded paint, agent orange, atrazine, C8, asbestos, chlordane, PCBs, and so on, have been stories of the steady unraveling of a founding myth of precision and specificity.
