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Our ability to manipulate genes can be very powerful.
人类控制基因的能力是非常强大的。
It has been very powerful.
这种能力已经非常强大了。
This is going to revolutionize human life.
也将彻底改变人类生活。
Would the consequences be bad?
这会引起不良后果吗？
And they might be.
也许吧。
Every time you monkey with the genome you are taking a chance that something will go wrong.
因为当改变基因组时，我们冒着出错的风险。
The technique could be misused in horrible ways.
这项技术也可能会以可怕的方式被滥用。
When I started this research project, I've kind of had this initial feeling of what have I done.
当我开始这个研究项目时，我最初的感觉是我干了什么。
CRISPR gene-editing technology is a tool that scientists can use to changethe letters of DNA in cells in precise ways.
CRISPR基因编辑技术是一种工具，科学家可以利用它以精确的方式改变细胞中的DNA。
So I like to use the analogy of a word processor on a computer.
我喜欢用电脑上的文字处理器来作比喻这个操作。
So we have a document, you can think about the DNA in a cell, like the text of a documentthat has the instructions to tell the cell how to grow and divide and become a braincell or a liver cell, or develop into an entire organism.
比如有一份文件，你把它想成细胞中的DNA，它就像一份文件的文本，告诉你细胞如何生长和分裂，成为一个脑细胞或肝细胞，或发展成整个生物体。
And just like in a document, the CRISPR technology gives scientists a way to go in and edit theletters of DNA.
像在文件中记录的那样，CRISPR技术为科学家提供了编辑DNA字母的方法。
Just like we might cut and paste text in our document or replace whole sentences, evenwhole paragraphs or chapters.
就像我们可能在我们的文件中剪切和粘贴文本，或替换整个句子，甚至整个段落或章节。
We can now do that using the CRISPR technology in the DNA of cells.
我们可以使用细胞DNA中的CRISPR技术来做到这一点。
CRISPR is an acronym that actually represents a sequence of DNA letters in the genomes ofcells.
CRISPR是一个缩写，实际上代表了细胞基因组中的一个DNA字母序列。
It's found in bacteria and it was interesting to scientists originally because it's a bacterialimmune system, a way that bacteria can fight viral infection.
它存在于细菌中，它最初对科学家来说很有趣，因为它是一个细菌免疫系统，是细菌可以对抗病毒感染的一种方式。
For scientists this is sort of really a gift that allows research to proceed very quicklyin terms of understanding the genetics of cells and organisms but also provides a verypractical way to solve problems.
对于科学家来说，这算是一个的礼物，能够让科学家快速了解细胞和生物体的遗传学，也提供了一个非常实用的方法来解决问题。
In clinical medicine, the opportunity to make changes to blood cells that would cure diseaseslike sickle cell anemia, a disease where we've understood the genetic cause for a long time.
在临床医学中，改变血细胞结构，从而治愈像镰状细胞性贫血这样的疾病，这种疾病的遗传原因已经为人们所知。
But until now there hasn't been a way to actually think about treating patients.
但直到现在，还没有一种方法能够用来治疗病人。
And now with this technology, it's possible in principle to remove stem cells that giverise to blood cells in a person's body,
现在这项技术，可以移除人体内产生血细胞的干细胞，
make edits to those cells that would correct themutation causing a sickle cell disease and then replace those cells to essentially givea patient a new set of cells that don't have the defect.
对这些细胞进行编辑，纠正导致镰状细胞疾病的突变，替换这些细胞，进而为患者提供一套没有缺陷的新细胞。
It's one thing to talk about being able to remove mutations from the human populationthat cause genetic disease.
从人类群体中消除导致遗传疾病的突变是一方面。
And I think for many people that would be a desirable thing to do.
对许多人来说，这是一件值得做的事情。
On the other hand, I think it's a very different discussion to think about using a technologylike this to create enhanced human beings.
另一方面，使用这样的技术来加强人类体质，这种讨论与之前大不相同。
People that are taller or have a certain eye color or other kinds of physical or intellectualtraits that might be considered desirable.
让人长得更高，或有某种眼睛颜色，或其他类型的身体或智力特征，这些都是人们想要实现的东西。
And it sort of immediately brings up sort of the the whole area of eugenics and sortof access to technology.
这引起了优生学和技术使用的整个领域的研究兴趣。
Who gets access, who pays for it, who decides, who decides whether or not to do such a thing,
谁能获得这些技术，谁来支付，谁来决定，谁来决定是否做这样的事情，
should companies be allowed to offer this as a service to parents who want to do thisand if so, should they be regulated in some way?
是否允许公司向想要这样做的父母提供这种服务，如果是这样，是否应该以某种方式进行监管？
There's a lot of very interesting and challenging questions, I think that go along with that.
与此同时，有很多非常有趣和具有挑战性的问题。
RICHARD CLARKE: The technique could be misused in horrible ways.
该技术可能被以可怕的方式滥用。
It could be misused for example, to create biological weapons, to create new forms ofthreats to human beings.
例如，它可能被滥用于制造生物武器，制造对人类的新形式的威胁。
Threats for which we don't have any known antidote.
对于这些威胁，我们没有任何已知的应对方法。
Or it could simply be used to create human beings of far superior capability.
或者，它可以被用来创造能力远超常人的人类。
