Gene Drive Technology and Ecosystem Risks

The impact event,

uh, is gene drive technology that Gates is promoting to

exterminate the mosquitoes, for example.

Oh, yeah.

You know, gene drive technology can be used to

exterminate a species,

particularly ones that have a high reproductive rate.

And, uh, you know, it's another one that is a CRISPR application.

Uh, but there's a whole school of thought

that gene drive tech should never be let out of the box into the

environment

because

in, in

the, it what's... You know, there are those that are actively promoting its

use,

uh, in, uh, to eliminate bad stuff.

And, uh, you know, we're all for eliminating bad stuff.

Uh,

um, uh, you know, organisms, insects, worms, uh,

flies, stuff. Uh, and

yet it...

And, and we can do experiments where we say,

"Oh,

we'll cultivate this kind of fly together with that kind of fly, and only these

flies are gonna have gene drive, and we're gonna look for whether

or not it gets

over to these flies. And if it doesn't, then we can conclude that it's unlikely."

But as Brett would tell you, um, we're dealing with ecosystems here,

really complex ecosystems. And the, the

risk environment now that I think

grownups have to acknowledge

coming out of COVID, you know, the big lessons.

We can, we can, we can talk about these

egregious things that we've all experienced

that have been put on us.

But the big picture is

this thing

came out, and I'm convinced it was engineered.

I'm, I, I believe the most likely hypothesis

is not that it was

intentionally released, I still think that's a possibility,

but that it was an

unintentional, uh, release, uh, an infection of,

of a lab worker or something like that

that let it get out, 'cause that's what happens again

and again in these-

Right

... facilities. Uh,

the,

these low probability events

can have extremely high impacts

and, as we've seen, global impacts.

And we have to rethink

how we're managing risk, which is, as I mentioned, Red SIF's kind of core

competence.

And, and

that logic

runs up against this belief that, "Well, it hasn't happened

so far, and I'm an expert, and I have the right to play around in

this, in this sandbox that I've helped develop.

I know more than you do. How can you tell me

that I shouldn't be doing that?

You don't have the right to tell me.

I'm the expert in this space." And, uh, to come into that

environment and say, "Look, guys, you're playing around with stuff

that could have a very high impact even though it hasn't happened yet,

and you've got to, to

rethink,

uh, what is acceptable