Gene-Editing and Neurodiversity

The field of biotechnology has been under the constant spotlight after the emergence of gene-editing technologies. The most popular one, CRISPR, uses an enzyme called Cas9 to make a cut in the gene and edit the gene to fix a mutation. 

But there are a lot of ethical implications. Gene-editing technologies strive to “fix” disorders or eliminate disorders, which goes against the concept of neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity promotes the inclusion of different versions of brains, whereas gene-editing technologies are encouraging people to spend money to “fix” these disorders. Is this right or wrong? There are obviously multiple sides to this, both advantages and disadvantages, which brings up the ongoing debate on the ethicality of gene-editing technologies. Ultimately, I would say it should be up to the general public to decide to what extent gene-editing technologies should go.