Researchers first started playing a bit
of «
fantasy exoplanet» with the rocky
world — dubbed Proxima b — last year after
scientists discovered it orbiting our nearest neighbor star, Proxima Centauri.
When a team
of Chinese
scientists announced last spring that they had edited the genes
of human embryos using the powerful new gene editing technology known as CRISPR / Cas9, the
world suddenly discovered that the dystopian possibility
of «designer babies» was no longer an unrealistic
fantasy, but rather a technically achievable possibility that must be reckoned with.