time, a discussion about standing up for working families and embracing progressive values. at 2:30 p.m. eastern time, a look at how to win back aggressive power through organizing. at 4:00 p.m. eastern time, developing vision statements that are aggressive's want to see. you can join us for live coverage of the net roots nation i-17 conference on c-span -- 20 17 conference on c-span. >> a call for a worldwide moratorium on a revolutionary gene editing new technology she helped create. it's ability to make notable changes in human embryos. walter isaacson will discuss the future of genetics and the power to control evolution in this conversation at the aspen ideas festival. this is about one hour.

>> this will be about one of the most moral questions you and your children will face which is to whether or not allow this technology edit a human genome. our guest is the author of "cracking creation." one portly, she is the author of a 20 -- 2012 scientific paper technologyns how the can be used to edit the human genome.

now, before we get into it, you can even start now thinking about the implications and what that means. specifically, talking about editing a human germ line which would allow it to be passed on to our children. first, i would like to start a little bit of how you got there. , we had dr.this day who discussed the double helix and dna. among the great things he did, like jennifer, he wrote a book about how he got there. were 12 years old, your dad for that book by your bedside, so let's start with that. >> first, good morning, everyone. it is an honor to be here with you all. was thet story, for me, beginning of my interest in molecular science.

i dad was a professor at the university of hawaii. somebody who liked to troll around in used bookstores, and he found this dogeared copy of "the double helix." realized this, i was a story, almost a detective was reala way, but it life, real science on how you could figure out the structure of a molecule by doing investigative experiments. from that moment on, i felt that was the kind of thing i wanted to do in the future. statement a wonderful here. "i have discovered the secret of life." explain what he discovered. >> well, he discovered the structure of the dna double

helix, so dna is the code of life. it is the molecules that hold all the information which hold the information on how to grow, divide, grow tissue. they discovered that it looks like to ribbons wrapped around each other in a double helix structure. it is important, because it explained a lot of things about inheritance. explained the way information could be sorted in the cell and copied from generation and generation. each strand of the double helix encodes and includes a set of letters for dna code. on there are other letters the other strand, so it is a beautiful way to explain a lot of questions that scientists had up to that point. in many ways, it helped to usher in the modern era of biology, because it opened the doors to

many of the types of technology we are now using. a phd at harvard, and you went on to teach. you are now at berkeley. your famous role before the technology was understanding the structure of rna which is the way dna expresses itself. explain your rna research. it was even before you came to that notion of your technology. >> many people think it actually came before dna and is a chemical husband -- chemical cousin. toshows that organisms tend hold in a single strand dna form. to it was a question i said -- i set out to answer as a younger scientists. what did the structure look like

when it was rna, and why do we care? many people think it was the first type of molecule that could store genetic information and replicate it. my 80 research as a younger site -- my research as a younger scientist would've been to understand how rna could be internalized into dna. moleculesrket -- rna could store information and pass it on to a new generation. >> what is the function of rna now? >> one of the fascinating things that has happened over the past two decades or so in biology is that we have appreciated how rna -- when i was learning analogy originally, we thought it was -- learning biology originally, we thought rna was a sort of boring molecule, protein molecules that do all the activity.

however, we now understand that rna molecules do lots of things to control the way genetic information is deployed. so, that is what i have been interested in studying over my career. how does that type of regulation work with rna. >> when you say dna is expressed in cells which means expressed extentwe are, to what are things determined by dna? what sort of things are just sort of added by our dna but are not completely determined by it? >> that is the $64,000 question. [laughter] tol, people have been trying understand the code of dna and what is in dna, all the genes that make up a human for example. one of the great things that has come out of that is that it is

complicated. it is really complicated. it is not just a list of genes, but there are many layers to the way that information is actually used. i think that is what you are alluding to. whicha type of genetics makes chemical changes to dna without altering the cells themselves him up but it changes the way the information is used. >> can you give us an example of a trait that is more controlled by the environment and what we do? and what is purely genetic or encoded? >> it is hard to give you a specific answer, but many people think traits having to do with our personality and how we interact with our environment. that is a consequence not just of the genes in our dna

but the way those genes are used. >> things like particular diseases or childhood obesity is more genetically determined? >> that is what people believe, yes. >> said you are doing study on dna and atomic structure, and as i read from the book, another great woman, a biochemist, give you a phone call out of the blue. she said to you, "we are doing c krispa and how it relates to rna, do you want to be a part of it?" >> yes, she was a june biologist, not a biochemist. she works on bacteria and where .hey go in the environment her research has uncovered a lot answers about the series of

sequences in dna. what was quite interesting about this pattern of sequences is that it included a series of unique sequences which were derived from viruses. the question that she had but was not supposed to answer in her own laboratory was whether or not those sequences stored elementsese crispr might be copied into rna molecules and bacteria to protect the cells from i/o infection. >> it was first discovered in spain i think? >> yes, there were several microbiology labs which had important early roles in it. many of them were in spain.

it is where the acronym crispr was made. denmarkere was a lad in looking to protect yogurt from bio infection. crisprarted harnessing in the use of food preparation. >> when you first heard it, you thought it was spelled like er" and you had to look at up to find out there is no final e in it. >> it was just one of those things that sounded so crazy to me. it seemed so interesting to try and pursue this. i've always been -- there are two kinds of scientists, broadly speaking. there are those who died very deeply into one area of biology and become world experts in it, and there are those who are more of a smorgasbord, and they are

picking out different things and trying things. i have always been sort of in the second category. when i heard about it, i thought it sounded so fascinating, and i wanted to take part in the excrement to find out if it is true. >> how did you get to the most amazing discovery of our time which is that crispr can edit our genetic code? >> i think this is a great example of small science and curiosity driven research as well as international collaboration. all the things which have characterized my career over the past 25 years. i got together with a colleague who i met at a conference. neither of us knew each other before him. she was running a lad in sweden at the time. she was working in a seemingly different area of science to me. she was in medical microbiologist studying bacteria which infects people. one of those bacteria turned out

to have a very interesting type of crispr system in which a single gene seemed to be required for the cells to protect themselves from viruses using the crispr sequences. -- the question of how that so, the question was how does that protein work. so, we got together to do some experiments to figure out that question. the results of that collaboration was the paper we published in 2012 in which we stated that the protein was amazing and could be programmed with little pieces of rna which laboratories could easily change or sequence. it uses that piece of rna to find a matching sequence of .etters in a dna molecule for example, the dna of a cell, a chromosome, and what it finds

the matching sequence, it holds onto the dna and makes a decisive double-stranded break. >> it is like cutting and pasting. >> yes, i like to use the analogy of word, because it is very analogous to this. it is the scissors that allow you to cut up text and change it. the cell then will make a precise change at the site of the repair. >> we will have to take a slight detour here, because the three major characters in this narrative so far are all women. i think back to the double helix the they sort of ignored only woman involved. is this a change in science? i do not think we have seen major breakthroughs like this led this way.

or was this just a coincidence? an interesting, serendipitous event. i think more women are starting to make headway in science. none of us played it this way, but it just so happened that all of us were running research laboratories doing highly, metairie types of work which made it easy for us to work together. >> why is it still harder for women in some ways? >> i think it is still some bias in this. there are some unintended -- i think it is still some biasness. some unintended bias in the field. women may feel more reluctant to step forward and volunteer for things, and so they get volunteered for things which

takes them away from leadership roles. so, i think it is a lot of subtle things. >> when you got to the notion of editing genetic sequence, what is it you are editing exactly? i noticed a strand of dna, but what would you call that strand length that you edit? >> i would call it a length of strand, i guess. >> but it might have a gene function? a gene, or itve might have a sequence that controls the team. -- the gene. so, you can make changes that are very precise down to -- imagine that you could make a change to a single letter in the 3 billion base characters in the dna of a human cell. that is the type of technology we have now with this technology. -- that is the type of accuracy we have now with this

technology. next so, get to -- explain to me the world difference of doing that to a human cell and doing it to a germline. >> if we talk about doing it in an adult anything, plant, animal, person, we are talking about taking changes to cells in ways that those dna changes are not inheritable to future generations. in a germline, that is a different scenario where the changes made to begin a become part of the entire organism in the germ cells are allowed to develop into a whole organism. be passedges can then on to future generations, and it becomes a permanent change. it is really changing the evolution of the species at that point. >> evolution has always changed, so why is it different here?

>> the difference here is that we are doing it in a targeted fashion. we are making decisions consciously about changing a set of genes which will do something we view as desirable. >> and the timescale is different. it would take >> well, proverbially. in theory. starting with the animals, give like babye examples, that scienceever, has already been able to use this to do. >> well, there's a lot of examples. so mice. you know that mice are used humanly as models of disease. it's been possible to make mice that have changes to their them moret make make-like in certain ways,

it easier to study the effects of therapeutic drugs, for example, on genes. similarly in -- well, you mentioned pigs. make it easier to study the attractivee of the things with pigs right now is so they'rering them better organ donors for humans. actively being worked on in research labs, but also in a startup company. you basically create pigs that become farms for organ treatments. >> that's the idea. right. >> what happens to the pigs? what do you do? how do you change their genetic coding? >> you can literally program the their organs or molecular properties look alike, making subtle alterations to at a d.n.a. so that molecular level they behave in a more human-like way. what about mosquitoes that carry zika oring what? you do to fix that?

gene drive.of just means if you have a way to alter d.n.a., you a way that will drive a genetic trait through a population of insects. if one does this in mosquitoes, already being worked on create aple, you could mosquito that cannot transmit a virus. mosquitoescreate that don'tily reproduce the same way, that you cut back on a population of mosquitoes. >> yeah, that's right. that being done in response to the zika virus? you using crispr technology?

>> i'm not, but many people believe this is an effective way to control insects otherwise spreading disease. >> that passes along to here on out,om right? it's not just a specific mosquito, but part of the germline of the mosquito experience or whatever. >> that's right. young, i read rachel carson, and we were able of mosquitoes, and a weren'ton later there any. we didn't know the consequences. how does science know the consequence of the mosquito population? >> we don't. to proceed with caution. i was at a talk ream, and about genes talking drive for mosquitoes, and they of building a large structure, maybe the size of this tent, designed to modifiedhese to dotoes, and really

experiments in a controlled environment to what happens when gene drive -- >> if you have a tent like this, mosquitoes.ontain we have nutria in louisiana, places that were supposed to contain them too. >> it's a big job. in charge of saying stop? >> right now there are regulatory agencies in charge of controlling the environmental release of are modified this way. right now we're at an time, because the thing about this technology, it's moving incredibly fast. sense, this you a technology is just barely five years old. it's already in clinical trials china.cer treatment in

it's mind-boggling how the base of the scientific research has this tool.ith there's a dozen or more papers a scientific the literature using the crispr technology. one of the big challenges how do you keep government regulatory groups up to speed with this, fast thingse how are moving? the pace of government is not that fast. example ofive you an it from yesterday, which will not.r be reassuring or tom price, the secretary of health and human services, as know, was here on this stage. the worried about affordable care act. office.our book in my he started asking about it. he said this will be more important, 50 years, 100 years

from now, on what you do on this, than what you do on the act, it willre affect the world more. toaid, well, maybe you ought read the book. i gave him a copy. we'll see. [laughter] a signed copy.m let's start talking about humans, if we may. me -- you know, looking at longer hair on sheep. viruses in pigs. hypoallergenic eggs. whereen there's a part you can start changing the human genome. on that?l we start what will we do first? i mean, there are blood diseases, cancers, what? >> yeah. the kinds of treatments that are focus right now of research are not -- first of germline.n the

right? we calllking about what kids,hanges to adults or but not inheritable. it's attractive to think of cure diseases that have a known single mutation causative. sickle cell disease is one that's talked about a lot. treatmentctive for a like this, because it's in the blood, and it's possible to take from a patient, do the editing outside the body, and replace the correctly edited so they replate the blood supply. sickle cell is severe disease, treatment, and there's a fairly large group of people affected. will be likely one of the targets of genetic -- we do moral spectrum, that's pretty solidly in the -- yeah, let's do that. affect the germline.

it won't affect children, but it will save people from a bad disease. time is ahead of us now on this, fact that we're spending not enough on research so china istry, taking the lead. what?e now using it for i think you're referring to using it in embryos, correct? >> correct. in china, they're asking the question, does this technology work in developing human embryos? could we actually imagine some day using it to -- you know, to correct the sickle cell mutation, but do it hasin someone who already this disease as an adult, but we want to do at the stage of embryo genesis. the first paper -- now there's several actually published -- published about this topic was of 2015d in the spring

using nonviable human embryos. know,lly sparked -- you it attracted a huge amount of attention, because i think it forefront the idea, you know, that this technology is on our doorstep, decisionve to make a as a society are we going to elect to proceed with -- the embryos, it meant that it would be all future generations would have this fix. if those embryos were implanted, if they were viable and implanted, in principle yes. were not viable was just a small choice. use could have chosen to viable ones. >> correct. >> so this is ready to go? >> well -- i mean in the next 5 to 10 years. >> certainly in that period of time, yes. >> if you were thinking of doing things youuld be the

would say i want to apply it to this? >> in embryos? >> yes. i personally am not ready to say.ere yet, i have to first of all, i think there societalbe a broad consensus about whether that type of use of gene editing should proceed. there obviously hasn't been the opportunity -- knew that somebody genetically an embryo was going disease,fatal blood you would not fix it? >> i would advise other think, today. somaticthe use of it in cell application should happen , and partly for safety to give ust frankly grappling withrt this issue. are we going to edit the

germline? honestly it will be hard to stop. everybody's feelings will be different. who decides? for it? pay >> responsible people will grapple t do it till we grapple. your co-author was a graduate student of yours. yes.ah, it's aman -- i assume assume by the pseudonym named anstina, i assume entrepreneur type, this is very recently -- >> yeah. to him and says let's do it. she's trying to commercialize this. she would, i would assume, make our children taller and smarter. mean, it's pretty easy to do -- let's take a specific withle that you could do the gene, which i think is have stronger bones. that's pretty simple genetic thing, right? >> or bigger muscles. >> bigger muscles. things that people would

say, i want my kids to have and biggernes muscles. that's scientifically areeivable, because those truly things you can find on the genome that you could change? right. >> so kristina goes to your let's marketays this. yeah. >> what happens? >> by the way, that's a true story. >> you won't give us her name? want her last name? >> yes. >> we'll talk later. going to go there, but this is something that ought to be talked about more. if there are silicon valley entrepreneurs trying there, but this is something that ought to be talked about to hire you graduate students to make people's kids have bigger muscles or stronger muscles, it ought to be -- >> to my knowledge, that's not happening today, but that doesn't mean it won't in the

future. came to sam,n right? >> this person came to my said she herself wanted to have the first crispr wanted to commercialize the technology, create a company that would parents,s service to offering them a menu of options. pretty shocked at the time, sam and i, not so much on, given all that's gone but it illustrates a couple of important points. an idea,inging up there's a whole commercial aspect to all of this that is all sort of we're grappling with. secondly, you know, it doesn't and ethicaloral challenges around the technology. not do that today in the united states. right? it would not be possible for her she do it, but could in other parts of the world? potentially yes. that used to respect

kristina, or some kristina like that, is in china trying to make that deal? let's just say i wouldn't be surprised if i was told that. >> people in the united states, are wealthy enough, and have they'reing, you know, on this moral spectrum, could in clear could go to a company, say the foreseeable future, say 5 to 10 years, and say here's the want on my baby? >> i think it could happen, yes. and let's start thinking through the moral things. suppose in the genetic line of a family, they've got a blood disease, whatever it may be. okay to say let's turn that one off? asking me my personal opinion? >> yeah, yeah. >> yeah. again, i think it comes down to, is it safe? any technology, you have to

ask risk versus benefit. me, i'd want to know, first of all, does this even work? does this company have credentials? do they have evidence? what's the safety of this? does it work? decide, youe to know, is the risk -- because there's always risk. worth theis the risk benefit? >> suppose the benefit is better risk?he >> well, then i think at some point it might be something we consider. i mean, we had an interesting meeting in early january of 2015. i think we talk about it in the book. where a group of scientists, a about 20 people, including paul berg and david baltimore, involved in the early discussions in the 1970's around the ethics of molecular cloning -- there, because there's something famous called the berg letter on cloning, where they say moratorium on

cloning. >> right, right. held, right?d of >> well, we're talking about two things.t molecular cloning means making copies of pieces of d.n.a. in bacteria. that's been shown to be quite do. to that's done wildly now across the world in biology labs. forward to today. >> yes. >> did you have a moratorium, because all of you scientists get together, or is that wishful thinking? think you could. that was the idea, would it be possible to build a consensus globally among the scientific and clinical communities about thisay to proceed with powerful technology? that's what many people are working to do. make about wanted to that meeting, it was interesting, even in that small scientists, all cut from the same cloth in a way, right? having this

conversation, and it was quite a conversation. at one point somebody said, we decide it's not ethical to use this in the germline for certain things. >> that's what i'm asking. it made everybody sit back and think with it differently. workere's still a lot of to be done, where it's safe in my to do that, opinion. question is, wouldn't that be immoral to say to a family, your kid has this easily marked trait that's going to -- blood disorder, not to fix it, right? >> if there was no other treatment, and the treatment -- let's go down the spectrum, suppose the kid is going to be born deaf.

>> that fits into an interesting realm. conversations with people in that community. many feel that deafness for them not a defect they would fix. >> so suppose you would two parents, both deaf, for genetic wasons, and they felt it not a defect, and they were that washave a child deaf, could they fix it so deaf?ild was >> whoa. well, right. this gets into the realm of who decides, right? who decides? who the parents decide? they can't be told do it? should want to do it, they be told they can do it, but only if they pay for it? are tricky issues.

>> if it goes down the germline, decision.heir the child doesn't have a voice. one has to think of the interests of the child, right? yes. >> as you go through the spectrum of things you could do, mass, muscles, perhaps height. to some extent, other traits. line or isme moral this a big old slippery slope? question, that's the right, is that we're grappling with. there a line? if there is, where is it? i think it's hard. you look at what's happened with over thefertilization last couple decades. i'm old enough to remember before and after. of controversy fertilization became available, people said that seems wrong. wrong,nts said, that's test tube babies, that seems

wrong. as there was obviously demand for it from in5:30 till couples, and shown over time to be safe to do, you know, it's become accepted, at least largely. some parents are allowed to choose the sex of their child. some do. don't. it's a funny thing. the regulation around this is a bit nebulous. will that happen with gene editing? it could. i don't know. trying tou say you're pull together consensus on it, chinesebring in the researchers? >> we did. >> what did they say? were interesting. they acknowledged the controversy around the work they were doing, but frankly they frank, very honest. they said, look, in our society, our culture, there's a different life and aboutn

of thembryos than sort judeo christian judeo-tradition. >> i'm quoting from your book. that germline editing is somewhat unnatural doesn't carry much weight with me anymore. what happened? found my attitude about editing the germline over time. for many reasons. abouts i started thinking the fact that, you know, after partners, and we have kids so at some level we're just by ourr kids choice of partner. actually these days you can -- can buyit or not, you

eggs. you can buy eggs, go to a sperm look in a catalog and decide who do i want the father of my child to be from a sperm bank. that's already being done. countries like israel that actually pay -- you know, they pay for couples to have up two kids by in vitro fertilization if they want to, for preimplantation diagnosis for devastating diseases associated with them. ofre's already a lot engineering going on. >> germany did that this the 1930's. exactly. it's not a -- it's not a araight -- it's not straightforward thing at all. the fact is it does go on. ae other thing is, i'm biochemst, and done fundamental molecules.

i don't do anything with embryos laboratory, yet i was getting contacted -- happening routinely -- by parents, whoilies, reach out and say, i have this disease in my family, sending pictures of their children, beautiful children, and they're devastating disease. that hits you deeply. you start to ask, well, if this were available in a way that prevented that kind of us useng why would we not it, you know? >> can we put a line in the sand between fixing diseases that are very harmful to people versus creating enhancements, like making children taller, muscles, smarter, blonder? people want to change the race, want my children to be a

different race. that's not a disease. that's something -- can we draw that type ofn thing and saying i've got a toetic disorder that's going destroy my blood? drawn?here no line to be >> let's say i told you we can make a change to an embryo that will remove a single gene, if left in place, will make a person susceptible to cardiovascular disease when they there's noand deleterious effect of removing ideagene, so it's a good to do that. a bad could do cholesterol already, do crispr take out somebody's bad cholesterol, and the whole germline? idea.t's the whole >> you're saying that's on the borderline of a disease enhancement. you call it enhancement or presenting disease? i don't know. it's a little bit of both.

>> is there any way anybody a probablyt or is it free-for-all? >> that's a great question. it may end up end being regulated differential in different jurisdictions justbly, i suspect, because people's opinions and values are going to be different, and it's hard to change that. when we get to border lines, one of the things that amused of armpitn get rid odor easily with crispr. >> that could be useful. the things in a blogger sense is that -- talking to secretary price but also others -- people question the value of basic science. n.i.h.,t to get rid of national science foundation.

pure basics out of research labs like yours. what would happen to a lab like yours, which is really just a wonderful group of people, graduate students, people doing experiments, if the government basic research? >> that would be a disaster. , we would probably fold up our operation and go do something else. i mean, this is the thing. facing this in the u.s. for the last decade at least, this push toward -- initially it was a push toward what's called translational research, in other words people saying why are we working on fungi when and really what we want to be doing is curing cancer and curing alzheimer's. i don't think anybody would argue that of course we want to deal with cancer, alzheimer's, other diseases. the question is, how do you get

there? if you look back over medical science, technology o a lot of e technologies that have led to smartery, it's a group of people, often a small group of smart people, that are just how thisee, i wonder works, and they do experiments. that was true with this whole project for us, that lead an unexpected direction. there has to be a balance. we need both. the danger right now, i think, alluded to this earlier, right -- if the united cuts back on funding for that kind of fundamental curiosity-driven research, a lot of it done in small laboratories, i think we're to find ourselves falling behind other countries. the cusp ofe on

that happening, because countries like china are ofesting huge amounts money -- >> >> i ones read china is times than0 more u.s. in genetic technology. does that sound right? >> that sounds about right. berkeley, i'm at one of the top research universities, get enoughggle to like to buy equipment electron microscopes, another field that's gone over a huge explosion in last few years in the advances of the technology, and meanwhile we see our up,eagues in china buying you know, 20 at a time. it's astounding. thatd you needed microscope to figure out, say, d.n.a.ecular sets of >> exactly right. if we hadn't invented the

transistor, the microchip, the laser, not invented internet, do circuits and thing, that's sort of that's wouldn't have happened if basic research, and some place like russia or china had actually invented everything from the microchip to the internet to the personal computer to g.p.s., you could russia being the dominant economy in the world, right? can you imagine china being the ifinant economy in the world we cut out? >> sure. we all wonder about it in the sure.ific community, for we joke about, some day we'll all be working in china, running lucky.here if we're it's a real question, i think, for many of us, you know, what

is the future of scientific research in this country. to maintain our predominance in that area or are slip away. let it >> now, this will be last ask, so i'm going to think of what you want to do with your grandchildren's i'll let the audience go. a lot of research in this fuel collaborative. then it's also competitive, it's amazon and google, or whatever, there's competition and collaboration, but in science there's certain things that tend to -- it seems to me, if i'm wrong -- promote more excision than they do collaboration. example, in your field there's been some controversy george church, havethers at harvard, who done things in their lab.

ericlan lander, he's done a lotn crispr. you've been battles over patents that deal with it. eric wrote a pieces called "the heroes of crispr" that got a lot of criticism because it minimized your role, and he was hit for both being ungenerous scientifically, and perhaps sexist, i think he got hit for it too, but part of this be drivenn seems to by two things. one, a patent office that needs that is hardhing to find in science these days, like who gets credit for this amazing thing, and secondly a nobel prize committee that can only award it to three people. does this bother you? is this a problem in science now? a problem it is definitely. i don't know how one solves this problem. ishink, you know, the truth i think that science always has included elements of both collaboration and competition. you need both in a way. you know, competition can be good.

obviously it spurs people on to is how tochallenge get that balance right. what i think about a lot, how to attract younger scientists into our field. i think we want to draw in -- the ones honestly that are driving the work right now. they're in lab, and i'm sitting here talking to you. but people in my lab are there it, and they're driving the next results that will be coming out. how do we ensure that they attracted to our field and drawn into it. if there's a danger of -- you certain typesly of people feeling excluded, if of unfairnessing somehow, that that can be very attracting to younger scientists. prizes.ng with

prizes, it's very difficult. i sit on various prize imagine.s, if you can think about when you want to give a prize in a certain area, you want to recognize scientists work, but you the appreciate at some level everybody's work is built on and involves the work of a lot of younger scientists in the laboratories who aren't being sort of named in particular. how do you deal with that? do you say you've had to depend on -- even though compete against george how wouldd others, that be made better? in your book, you don't talk about them. in his article he doesn't talk about you. it feels to me, if i may, i story about where this happened in technology microchip, where both intelinstruments and coinvent. it's a 20-year patent battle and prize battle, or

finally they decide to share the patent, and they do. killby gets a nobel prize, died.e noyes would you like to bring people together at some point? >> it sounds lovely when you put that way. [laughter] of course life is always more complicated. know, first of all, i don't own any patents. by know, they're all owned my university. it's my university that's making decisions about what to do with property.al they are the ones hiring lawyers, deciding how to pursue things. m.i.t.e is true at if it were up to the scientists, it might be better, or maybe not, but -- we do have some lawyers in the room, so you don't have to blamingticizing them,

them. [laughter] well, thank you. let me open it up, if i may. way in the back. >> dan pearlman. i'm a scientist, following the crispr story. imagine to have you that we live in an age of 2017 is no ice cream, and you invent ice cream, and your come over and you say, well, how do you like it? they say we love it. then you say, well, it causes elevation, it may be siderous, causes hazardous effects. maybe we shouldn't do anything about it. publish it ond the internet. crispr is like that, because the hat.s out of the capitalism is here to stay. i don't understand in what alluded to, the free-for-all, how we'll have any it if patent

offices are going to be etc.?vant, what do you think about future, say, 5-10 years? >> on one hand it's wonderful, but also very challenging about the technology, is that it's widely available. whether patent offices, notwithstanding, anybody doing academic or even commercial research right now can easily ahold of the crispr molecules and tools for doing gene editing, and they can do it. that's, of course, happening. there's absolutely no way to put back in the bag. i was at an ethics meeting a philosopher got up and said, if i could, i would throw away crispr, and i well, but you can't. it's sort of a moot point, that.e we can't do i think you're right. you know, it's forging ahead. grapple with -- we're in the system we're in, right? deal with this

technology in that context. this is why, i guess, i've been know, anng, you international discussion about it. i think the worst thing we could it, or foro ignore scientists not to get involved in helping to educate people about it, and help to make those decisions. a question. >> yes. >> the negative and positive, as came out ofotherapy experimenting with germ warfare. face germgoing to warfare in the future? >> james clapper, the director intelligence, you were surprised to read it, in the top 10 threat assessments to our country. >> yeah. are we going to see gene warfare going on? not.i hope i think it's something that has to be carefully considered. and, yes, you know, it was listed as one of the top, you of massapons

destruction recently. why is that? c.i.a. and -- >> right, right. for these reasons, that it's widely available, it's accessible. you know, it's technology that's misuse.use and easy to i don't have any easy answers to that, right? i think it's a big challenge we for sure. >> give me the nightmare regime orf a rogue non-state actor. >> well, you know, you could imagine misuse of this genetic traits in whatever, humans or something eitherhat would have deleterious effects or deleterious effects on other species. but honestly, do i worry about that more than i worry about other things? dangerous viruses that one can synthesize, you know, known, how are well to make them. i mean, there's a lot of ways to do bad things, right? think this is another way to

do bad things, but i'm not sure is, you know, that much different in a way than other technologies that one could misuse. back, becausey the microphone got to her first. then the gentleman in the middle. >> hi. is maya. i'm 18 years old. i find your story very inspiring, especially for young women. was, have you ever experienced discrimination based on your gender? do you deal with it in fields like science, technology, etc.?ss, >> well, when i was in high school, my high school guidance me what did id want to do when i grew up, and i scientist. to be a he laughed. he now? is should we send him the listening to this video?

sure, we can send him the link. that is the overt time remember something happening like that happen. i have to say that i have been -- really been fortunate if my career. i'm really grateful to many me,le that have supported helped me out, men and women, who have given me encouragement at moments when i thought about quitting, which, you know, has happened many times. to say i'm fortunate that way. i talk to a lot of women who held back inel various ways. again, in my experience, in many indicates, it's kind of unintentional. it's not actively trying to women from moving ahead, but it's doing things that aren't beneficial to them in atferent ways, whether it's earlier stages encouraging them to go into the stem field, stick or whetherem field, it's at the level of, you know, c.e.o.g a professor or a

of a company and needing things like childcare, you know, to itange your schedule so that accommodates your personal life as well. so i just think there's still thatwork to be done in area. we have to do it, you know, at your generation frankly, right? encourage people to think about enabling women in ways them.ill be effective for >> right here. then i'll go way back there. >> there have been so many over the last 50-100 years. different.unning and different?his one different, and what is the difference? think it's difficult. first of all, it's enabling in a way that most things are not. it's enabling not just in

medical science, in clinical applications, but for everything. we didn't talk too much about this, but it's also being very agriculture,ow in for animal husbandry, for -- >> all of this program, this discussion is