• Question: What do you think the next big discovery will be?

    Asked by anon-224936 to Simon, Selen, Paul, Nawapat, Natalie, Katy on 16 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Paul Laurance-Young

      Paul Laurance-Young answered on 16 Nov 2019:

      I don’t know, it’s not been discovered yet!
      I would like to see more work in producing new antibiotics (the way people ask for antibiotics just because they have a cold means we are rapidly heading back to the Dark Ages of medicine) or personalised medicine using treatments tailored to your very own DNA

    • Photo: Nawapat Kaweeyanun

      Nawapat Kaweeyanun answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      The world of science is very large so I’m not 100% sure on this, but we will likely see progress in gene therapy very soon. Gene therapy describes how we can change our own DNA in order to prevent bad genetic diseases, such as Downs syndrome. To do this we need a way to cut/edit DNAs very accurately, and we are seeing that with the new CRISPR method (there are a lot of articles online on this topic). However, whether we SHOULD have gene therapy is a big question in science right now, because once it exists there will be people who want to use it for problematic purposes (for example, what if every rich parent makes sure their children have white skin?). I don’t know how this will turn out, but it will be an exciting time for sure.

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