Gene drives are natural or artificial processes that favor the inheritance of certain genes throughout a population. Target Malaria is developing gene drives to change the genomes of malaria-carrying mosquitoes to eradicate the disease.
Gene drives have also been suggested for reducing wild-animal suffering. For example, transhumanist philosopher David Pearce proposes CRISPR-based gene drives for promoting low-pain alleles in sexually reproducing wild animals (Pearce 2016) . The leader of the MIT Media Lab’s Sculpting Evolution group Kevin M. Esvelt also has written favorably about engineered gene drives for reducing wild-animal suffering (Esvelt 2019).
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