CRISPR and you know who... So I was doing some exploring in webland and came across a breakthrough tech called CRISPR.   I'm more than a bit late to the party.  CRISPR was all the rage in 2015.  Here's an article that introduces the topic: CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Not a scientist? Me either. In normal speak, CRISPR is what scientists call small (short) patterns (repeats) of DNA that occur in spaced out groups (clustered regularly interspaced) that are the same spelled backwards and forwards (palindromic). You will frequently see CRISPR appended like this “CRISPR-Cas9” or “CRISPR-Cpf1.” Cas9 and Cpf1 are proteins that can be used with these sections of DNA to edit them¹ ². Using CRISPR to edit DNA is so cheap that a graduate student with access to a lab can get started for $75. Using these methods, scientists in labs have already edited genomes in mice that changed their fur from black to white³, in tomatoes that slow down rot⁴, and again in mice that reversed blindness causing mutations⁵. Scientific consensus appears to hold that CRISPR is going to be huge⁶ ⁷. While CRISPR could be used to cure a wide ranging variety of diseases, some fear it could be used to create super humans or lead to accidental biological disaster. Touted as the next big thing in biotech, I wasn't surprised to find the Gates Foundation all over this.  Here are a few older pieces to set the stage: Bill Gates: Gene editing can help humanity Bill Gates Bets on Biotech's "Next Big Thing" Bill Gates And 13 Other Investors Pour $120 Million Into Revolutionary Gene-Editing Startup Bill Gates Doubles His Bet on Wiping Out Mosquitoes with Gene Editing Scientists mobilize for a fight over powerful gene-editing technology And some more recent articles: Why Bill Gates thinks gene editing and artificial intelligence could save the world NIH and Gates Foundation lay out ambitious plan to bring gene-based treatments for HIV and sickle cell disease to Africa Bill Gates Speech at American Association for the Advancement of Science Yes, the CRISPR technology is central to the current effort to produce a COVID-19 vaccine in record time: Coronavirus and the Gates Foundation, Rushing Out Those Unproven Vaccines Coronavirus and the Gates Foundation