The Unintended Consequences of Playing God

Imagine you're going blind. The world slowly becomes a blur. You can no longer see your family or your friends. You can't see the beauty of a mountain landscape or the ripples in the ocean. Then a YouTuber comes around, offering to give you the gift of sight. This is exactly what happened in January of 2023 when Mr. Beast found a thousand people suffering from cataracts, and then offered them a simple surgery to regain their eyesight. Surgery, which takes 10 minutes, cured them forever.

Well, was Mr. Beast playing God and reversing the course of nature? Science and technology have given people new limbs with prosthetic advancement; it's cured people of immeasurable pain, like Victoria Gray, a 37-year-old mother from Mississippi who was born with the blood disorder CLE cell disease and has endured lengthy hospital stays and debilitating fatigue. In 2019, the controversial gene editing technology CRISPR cured her of her pain and transformed her life. Was that playing God? Or how about this: in 2018, a doctor in China used CRISPR to genetically engineer two baby girls to be resistant to HIV.

The context: since the beginning of its epidemic, between 65 million and 113 million people have been infected with HIV, and of those people, around 40 million have lost their lives. Yet when this doctor genetically engineered these baby girls to be resistant to this life-threatening disease, he was arrested, with many accusing him of trying to play God. Our attempts to make scientific and technological advances often leave us confronting the harm they can do.

Genetically modified food can make food more accessible, but it threatens economies and environments in places like the Congo. Lab-grown meat reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases but puts farmers out of business. These are the unintended consequences of trying to play God. There's a new craze around the idea of bringing extinct animals—like the mammoth and the dodo bird—back to life by genetically transforming one of their close relatives. Instead of trying to bring back animals from extinction, we should focus on preserving our wildlife and stopping them from going extinct in the first place.

That might seem like a huge challenge, especially for individuals like you and me, but my friends at Planet Wild have made it easy to support wildlife conservation and have fun along the way. Right from the comfort of your home, stick to the end to understand how you can be a part of this.

Humans have always tried to overcome nature. Whether it was ancient Chinese blowing ground-up smallpox scabs into people's noses, like an early vaccine, or building wooden prosthetic limbs that operated with pulleys and strings, we've persistently worked to make life easier and safer. In the year 1800, global life expectancy was only 29 years old, and until the late 1800s, people thought that infectious diseases could be caught by breathing smelly air. So they would reduce their chances of getting sick by breathing through bunches of flowers. Seriously!

But the medical advancements that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries made us drastically healthier. After a cholera outbreak in 1854, British Dr. Jon Snow drew a map and discovered that all of the victims lived near the same water pump. The government removed the pump, and the cholera outbreak stopped. This was the beginning of germ theory, which helps us understand diseases like COVID-19 and how they spread from one person to another. Modern surgical techniques and simple handwashing protocols make hospitals safe for us all.

While generally the outcomes of medical advances like these are positive, there can be unintended consequences that we aren't prepared for, like an aging global population. 200 years ago, global life expectancy was only 29 years, and today it's 73. The reality of these advancements is that while some get to enjoy the fruits of innovation, others are left behind. Clean drinking water limits the spread of harmful bacteria and chemicals, yet around 26% of the world's population doesn't have access to safe drinking water. Worse, around 46% lack access to basic sanitation.

Even how long we get to live isn't equal. People in high-income countries like Japan are expected to live three decades longer than people in low-income nations like the Central African Republic. But life expectancy differences due to imbalances in income can exist even in the same city. In 2015, in Baltimore, a city in Maryland, USA, life expectancy in one wealthy neighborhood was 19 years higher than in poor communities just 3 miles away. What would our world become when some people become gods, living long, healthy lives, while others remain mere mortals, barely able to live long enough to see their grandchildren?

But that's not all. Over the years, birth rates have slowed due to advancements in contraception, family planning, and more gender equality in the workplace. Not only are our life expectancies increasing, but without the infusion of babies, the population on average is getting older. This means that labor forces, economic growth, and social support systems are under a lot more stress, and more people are at risk of age-related diseases like dementia, vision loss, and cardiovascular disease. A longer life doesn't always mean a healthier life. Thanks to medical advancements, people can live longer while still being chronically sick or disabled.

In fact, with the drastic increase in life expectancy, disability rates have remained constant. The question of why life persists even in the most difficult circumstances is one I can't answer. Philosophers for millennia have tried and failed, but the reality is if we want to keep enjoying the benefits of living longer, these things need to improve. We need to improve public health care and elder care.

With an older population, there's more need for social support since more people are retired. Even though there have been leaps in gender equality, and it's put more women in the workforce, as a population ages, women are often expected to leave work and become caregivers. Those strides for women's rights and independence could be reversed. The United Nations wants countries to adopt policies to reduce the negative impacts of an aging population, like reforming pension systems, raising retirement age, eliminating barriers for older people in the workforce, and developing long-term care strategies for caregivers.

Now, while none of us would ever argue that we should get rid of sterile surgical instruments or functioning sanitation systems, the people who developed them probably weren't thinking about how thin our healthcare and social systems would be stretched a century later on the other hand. Our current technological and scientific advances are so fast-paced that we don't have to wait 100 years to be hit in the face with their unintended consequences.

Like GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, for example. In their relatively short life, they’ve already caused so much controversy. In the simplest terms, GMOs are animals or plants whose DNA has been altered with the goal of improving the genetic makeup of the organism or getting rid of unwanted characteristics. Scientists mainly study genetically modified animals to learn more about health and disease, but a few of them, like GMO salmon, end up in our food supply. Whether or not we should be eating genetically modified animals can be a conversation for another day, but that's not even the main controversy surrounding GMOs.

For that, we have to look at the global fruit and vegetable supply. The first genetically engineered plants produced for consumption showed up in the 1990s, but today, 90% of corn, soybeans, and sugar beets are genetically modified. But there's a good reason for this: farming GMOs produces higher yields, longer shelf life in crops that are resistant to disease and pests, and on top of all of this, they usually taste better.

Also, because they're resistant to pests, farmers use less pesticides, which we can assume is better for the environment. So good for consumers, the farmers, and the environment! What could go wrong? A lot, actually. Yes, eliminating pesticides is good, but GMOs cause controversy not only because they change a plant in a way that wouldn't happen naturally, but also because they can impact the biodiversity of the area where the crop is grown.

For example, bees rely on plants for survival, and if the natural properties of the plants they live near change, the bees are affected. Once the bees are affected, the whole natural pollination of the area gets thrown out of whack, and the landscape and the natural resources change forever. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the second largest country in Africa, has the most significant biodiversity in Africa and is governed by various laws to protect it. GMOs directly conflict with these laws because they potentially threaten the natural environment.

The European Union has banned GMO products, not only because of environmental preservation purposes but also due to the lack of research on how they affect our health. However, many African countries are weighing GMOs' potential ability to curb hunger crises against their potential for untested health consequences. In Zambia, many people believe that GMOs cause resistance to antibiotics and weaken the body's immunity to disease. The truth is that GMOs just haven't been around long enough for us to know their true long-term effects.

There's a chain reaction once an organism is genetically modified. How threatening that reaction is to the environment and our health has yet to be seen. We can see this kind of controversy sprouting up in other scientific advancements and in what we put in our body. Lab-grown meat may have seemed like a sci-fi plotline until recently, but in June 2023, the US Department of Agriculture granted the first-ever approval for sale of cultured chicken meat.

90% of the US population eats meat regularly, but a growing number of people around the globe are concerned about the current meat industry, which accounts for about 15% of global carbon emissions. Big livestock operations are also breeding grounds for harmful bacteria; they generate tons of waste, and the animals often live short lives under harsh conditions. But we still love our meat! Most of us, at least. Meat is rich in protein, it's part of traditions and holidays, and for many, it holds cultural significance, not to mention it tastes pretty good.

So maybe instead of cutting it off altogether, lab-grown meat can be a solution for conflicted carnivores out there. Lab-grown meat starts with a sample of stem cells from a fertilized chicken egg, the best of which are submerged in a vat of nutrient-rich broth with ingredients that help the cells grow and divide. As they grow and divide, they adhere to one another and eventually produce enough proteins to harvest. This new meat is textured, rather by heating or shearing it, and then it's pressed into a nugget or cutlet shape. At this point, lab-grown chicken is still a novelty, only available at a handful of US restaurants.

Until the industry scales much larger, it's hard to argue and gauge its environmental benefits. What is certain is that cultured meat facilities will use far less water and land and emit fewer greenhouse gases. But as we create meat out of almost nothing, what are the unintended consequences? Italy can answer that one for us. The Italian parliament just banned lab-grown meat after being lobbied by several farming groups.

The ban cites lab-grown meat as ruining the cherished relationship between food, land, and human labor, and this gives a sneak peek into some of the unintended consequences of cultured meat. Sure, it can help the environment and potentially improve animal welfare, but what about the farmers who rely on the meat industry to survive? What do they do? It begs the question: just because we can do something, does that mean that we should?

These rat species, the extinct one and the relative they were trying to engineer, split evolutionarily 2.6 million years ago, and that's considered a close relative. Mammoths and Asian elephants split 6 million years ago, and we can't even compare the complexities of raising a lab-grown mammoth with a rat. So it's safe to say that we won't see mammoths wandering around anytime soon. But even if we could bring back these extinct animals, should we? Because for the cost of bringing back one species from extinction, we could save eight species currently still in existence.

NASA has spent over $100 million a year on research to get to Mars—to say nothing of what private companies like SpaceX are spending. People say that learning about Mars can answer questions about Earth's history and get kids interested in science, and sure, that is valid. But there's also a lot of pressing issues here on Earth that could use $100 million a year. We could instead focus our energy on preserving the world we've been given. At the end of the day, the grass is only greener where you water it.

Speaking of Mars, Martians might still be a thing of science fiction, but genetically engineered humans have moved far beyond Frankenstein and into our current reality. Gene editing is perhaps the ultimate frontier of the debate around playing God. The gene editing technology CRISPR allows doctors to make precise changes to someone's DNA, even before they're born. In 2020, the creators of CRISPR won the Nobel Prize because the science can help treat and cure disease. Who wouldn't want that?

Currently, testing is being done on the safety of gene editing for conditions like blindness, blood disorders, blood cancers, diabetes, and HIV or AIDS. It can help people like the Mississippi woman with CLE cell disease from living a life of suffering. The benefits could be world-altering, but so could the drawbacks. Because like any delicate technology, there's a concern that rogue companies or rogue scientists might use genome editing for full-blown eugenics—engineering a type of person that one misguided or evil leader believes to be the right type of person.

The beauty of our world is that we're all different. Unfortunately, those differences are sometimes in the form of pain or sickness. Do we cure one type of difference and risk losing all the others? There are complex ethical trade-offs, and advancements like gene editing should it only be done on living humans who can consent to alleviate a disease? Or should we allow embryos to be edited to be resistant to those same diseases in the first place?

Right now, it's not really a debate that most of us can have because the treatments that will be approved soon cost more than $2 million a person. And that's the reality of new technologies: only some of us get to play God. If the Earth fails, we're not all going to new, state-of-the-art colonies on Mars. If embryos can be resistant to cancer, not every embryo will get to be.

We don't even have clean drinking water for everyone, or vaccines, or prosthetics, or any of the advancements that so many people take for granted. Mr. Beast showed in the video how easy it is to help thousands of people see again, which only makes it more painful knowing that so many still struggle to get that treatment. Why do only some people get access to life-changing treatment while others are left to suffer? There aren't just the unintended consequences of playing God; there are the very real and known consequences for those who never even get the chance.

It's time we stop trying to act like gods, bending nature to suit our desires. Let us instead act like humans, working together in communities to help each other and our planet grow and blossom. To put my money where my mouth is, I partnered with Planet Wild, a community of people working together to restore global ecosystems and preserve our nature and wildlife.

Every month, Planet Wild goes on a mission to restore an ecosystem, and you can be a part of this journey by signing up for a subscription with them. The money you pay will be used to fund these monthly missions, and you don't have to take either my or Planet Wild's word on this—they release monthly videos on YouTube detailing everything about the missions so you can see where exactly your money's going and the amount of difference you're making for our planet.

In their latest mission, they're planting 40,000 trees and learning more about forest gardens in Senegal to overcome desertification. To join this community and help preserve the planet, simply scan the QR code on screen or click the link in the description and use code APUTURE. The first 200 people to sign up will get their first month completely free. You'll be making a huge difference—completely free for the first month. For that alone, I believe it's worth it, and I can assure you that once you see the amount of good your money's doing, you'll definitely want to keep that subscription.