Power Trip
The Ender
New breakthroughs in gene editing will lead to incredible rewards — and risks we can barely contemplate
This is the last installment of “Privatizing the Apocalypse”, a four-part essay published throughout October. Read the previous installments here — Part 1: “The 50/50 Murder,” Part 2: “Deterrence — and the Undeterrable,” and Part 3: “The Deadly Gamble on Super A.I.”
A noxious strain of H5N1 flu started killing people in 2003. It ranks among history’s most lethal viruses. But one of its cousins is much more famous. Popularly known as swine flu, that cousin is also rightly feared. But at its worst, H5N1 is three thousand times more likely to kill those it infects. Not three thousand percent more (which would be plenty bad) but three thousand times more.
The World Health Organization has shown this strain kills a devastating 60 percent of those it strikes. That’s more deadly than Ebola, and almost all cancers. And of course, wayyyyy more (a technical term) than swine flu, which inflicts an almost genial death rate of just 0.02 percent. But for all its foibles, H5N1 has one trait I think we can all get behind: It’s not very contagious at all amongst humans.
Outside of the lab, that is.
