Summary

After a decade of "introspection and reconsideration" of gene therapy, it has now returned with new technologies to deliver and monitor gene therapies. In 2014, a landmark study "announced the successful use of gene therapy to treat hemophilia" (465). The next frontier of gene manipulation is about altering genes in reproductive cells so that genetic modifications can be passed down through generations, resulting in "permanently amended human genomes" (467). In this final chapter, Mukherjee discusses the technical hurdles of this idea, as well as the far-reaching ethical and moral implications. He writes about the technical and moral/ethical challenges of working with ES cells to modify the human genome. In the first decades of the 21st century, scientists have made strides toward more specific and targeted forms of gene therapy that could eventually "achieve the intentional permanent modification of the genome in human...