But while gene sequencing will change the provision of healthcare – creating preventative medicine that permits us to respond to illness before we even exhibit symptoms – the biggest breakthrough in biotechnology will be gene therapies. In terms of the leading causes of death, whose primary risk factor is age, this will create abundance in healthcare which even exceeds the exponential challenges posed by societal ageing.
Extreme Supply in Healthcare: Gene Therapies
Genetic engineering is nothing new. Indeed, we have knowingly altered the genome of various species for 12,000 years through selective breeding – a central innovation of the First Disruption. That gave us creatures fit for labour and crops like wheat which were hardy, easy to grow and nutritious. While we gained mastery in these fields before we had cities, writing or mathematics it wasn’t until the nineteenth century, through the work of Gregor Mendel, that we understood precisely how such mechanisms function.
After Mendel, however, understanding genetic inheritance increasingly resembled a science rather than an art. By the middle of the twentieth century our knowledge of the field was so impressive that humans grasped how they might be able to accelerate a process seen throughout nature – evolution – inside a laboratory. While DNA was understood to be responsible for heredity from 1952, and Crick and Watson’s double helix model was formulated the following year, the first genetically-engineered animals weren’t produced until the early 1970s. That breakthrough was arguably as profound as the transistor, the integrated circuit and even Watt’s steam engine. Within just a few short decades theoretical science had become applied technology.
Editing Destiny
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