George Church

uh even in technological society so in technology you can you can jump to things that where all the intermediates aren't you know incrementally useful with evolution is as far as we know generally limited to you have to justify uh every change uh it's like some bureaucracy says well if you're gonna you put this sidewalk in you know you have to justify that before you can build a city

It's hard to say because as soon as you say it, it becomes hyped.

If I've ever been asked this question before, it's too late.

I would say

One thing I think is very ripe and is very well understood in a certain sense, but is nevertheless ignored.

It's kind of like the previous example I would have chosen was making genes out of arrays.

Arrays were typically used for analytic, you know, quantitating RNAs or something like that.

So the original aphometrics type arrays.

But we turned them into gene arrays.

And just...

people weren't using it.

It was in nature, it was hidden in plain sight.

But anyway, it was somehow underhyped.

What I would say is genetic counseling is underhyped.

It is clearly competitive with gene therapy in a certain sense.

I mean, clearly not for people that are already born, but for people in the future, not even distant future, next couple of years.

We've got a chance of diagnosing them or...

diagnosing the potential parents and dodging.

And this has been in practice since 1985 in Dorya Sharim.

Perfectly reasonable community response to it, eliminated or greatly reduced all sorts of very, very serious inherited diseases.