Esvelt's work also shows up in a proposal to modify mice on Nantucket Island to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease, which affects 40% of the human islanders.

Esvelt's work also shows up in a proposal to modify mice on Nantucket Island to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease, which affects 40% of the human islanders. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/science/ticks-lyme-disease-mice-nantucket.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/science/ticks-lyme-diseas... The gene drive technology looks like a classic "great power, great responsibility" tech, with possibilities both for global benefits and global disaster. We already have political struggles over managing long lived nuclear isotopes, but genetic manipulation of wide-spread endemic species seems like a space in which unforeseen problems have the possibility of becoming immortal, modulo additional genetic tinkering. We look back at how people in the Victorian era carried plant and animal species around this planet, willy-nilly, and shake our heads. Will future generations thank us, or revile us for how we use this tech?