"I was given a long explanation about how gene drives worked and was filled with mild existential terror at how easy it would be to replace "mosquito" with "human"."
You're right of course, and unfortunately sooner or later what you say will come to pass (tragically, I see it as inevitable).
My take is slightly different: as the technology is here now, and given that we cannot stop it (certainly not in the long term - as eventually the tech will get so easy that it'll done in backyard sheds), then it's better to run with something like this mosquito eradication which hopefully may do some good.
With luck - and we'll need lots of it - intelligent regulation may follow. Ban it outright and it'll definitely go underground. Backyard sheds will then become labs that are centers of research. Heaven knows where that would lead us.
When this happens for humans, I predict that we would also see parallel development of tests which ensure that a potential mate does not have gene drives in their genome.
You're right of course, and unfortunately sooner or later what you say will come to pass (tragically, I see it as inevitable).
My take is slightly different: as the technology is here now, and given that we cannot stop it (certainly not in the long term - as eventually the tech will get so easy that it'll done in backyard sheds), then it's better to run with something like this mosquito eradication which hopefully may do some good.
With luck - and we'll need lots of it - intelligent regulation may follow. Ban it outright and it'll definitely go underground. Backyard sheds will then become labs that are centers of research. Heaven knows where that would lead us.