this is crispr? >> feng zhang: this has crispr in it. >> whitaker: so, this is what's revolutionizing science and biomedicine? >> feng zhang: this is what many people are using, in research, and trying to develop treatments. >> whitaker: that's wild. >> feng zhang: yeah. >> whitaker: that little vial is igniting a big revolution that is likely to change the way doctors treat disease in the future. one of the brains behind it is baby-faced feng zhang. >> feng zhang: how about the scaled-up r.p.a.? >> whitaker: at 36, he's already a tenured professor at m.i.t. and a scientific celebrity, because he figured out a way to override human genetic instructions using crispr. so, the crispr is not the liquid, the crispr is in the- >> feng zhang: it's dissolved in the liquid. there are probably billions of molecules of crispr. >> whitaker: billions? >> both: in here. >> feng zhang: that's right. and the way we use it is, we take the liquid and apply it to cells. >> whitaker: for the last seven years, zhang has

discovery in this century so far. >> whitaker: if you have never heard of something called "crispr"ore now, that's likely to change. crispr is a tool for editing our d.n.a., reprogramming the genetic code, and it has scientists excited about tackling genetic diseases like alzheimer's and cancer. how many diseases are we talking about that this could be used to treat? >> there are about 6,000 or more. the hope is that we'll be able to help all of them. >> pelley: there is a new kind of affirmative action happening on college campus, and stus

things like cloning and designer babies and new genetic technologies like crispr. those kinds of questions are still being mobilized in our modern conversations. the ideas do not go away even if we use different names to talk about them. susan: it sounds from your last answer it is getting more complicated because of technology. do you see that -- these questions and are ethical considerations are going to get bigger and bigger for our society? ms. nurridin: i think it will get more collocated because oure is a large push in our society to think about things and genetic terms. we talk about certain ideas being in our dna. we found the gene for this. there is a gene for people for schizophrenia. we are looking for genes for addiction. we were talking about people looking get genes to talk about things like homosexuality and trans identity because we tend to think of putting genes as a way to understand things that exist in the world. as long as we are trapped in thinking of those genetic terms, the eugenics questions will come in to play. if we think more broadly ab