- A group of scientists of Sun Yat-sen University reported recently that they modified the genome of human embryos, something that has never been done in the history of the world.
- CRISPR, stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which are the hallmark of a bacterial defense system that forms the basis for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology.
This technology can find bad sections of DNA, cut them and replace them at a low level of accuracy with DNA that doesn’t code for diseases, but it can also make unwanted substitutions.
- The increased ability to control and manipulate embryos presents many bioethical debates. It may bring possibilities for improving the health of children through prenatal diagnosis, yet these possibilities are coupled with neo-eugenics potential consequences regarding the selection of genders, physical and cognitive attributes.
Ultimately, designer babies represent great potential in the field of medicine and scientific research, but there remain many ethical questions that need to be addressed.
Through a series of synthetic and digital alterations realized in this project, the ambiguous relation between the real, the living nature and the numerically constructed fantasy is questioned. Textured colored models of the fetus, and severe modifications create angles of disturbing strangeness. It emanates experiences whose emotional quality is both relating to organic and numerical spheres. In the scrambling of the sound of a living cell accelerating, the real and the true, this is what orders the existence itself and our adherence to its limits, which become the object of a reflection.
