Torill Kornfeldt

In 2018, the first genetically-modified children were born. Now we have the tools to reshape the future of our species. With a pair of genetic scissors known as CRISPR, we can potentially select the traits of our children, or avoid ageing, or cure disease. But with that ability comes a new set of risks, forcing us to face hard ethical questions. Torill Kornfeldt has travelled all over the world to meet the people driving this research forward. She has visited fertility clinics in South Korea, oncologists in China who are experimenting on sick patients, and biohackers in the US who want to make the new technology available to everyone. In The Unnatural Selection of Our Species, she asks: How are we supposed to handle these new tools that could end up changing our genetic material?