 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are going to take a two-decade review of where life sciences are. Because, of course, with COVID-19, we know that life sciences, the importance of life sciences, is only going to grow. This is not going away. And the epidemic has made it much more clear to the people, even those who thought they are not going to see infectious diseases. It's a disease of the poor countries. They have also now realized this is not so. Satyajit, to ask you one question, which is always plagued us, that biotechnology has always had a lot of hype, a lot of promises. It has delivered for history, for anthropological purposes, for various other purposes. It seems to be delivery. But when it comes to medicines, which is what the original hype was, are we going somewhere? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel or a rainbow that you can see? And has CRISPR made it, is it really the game changer as people put it? So this is one of those kinds of questions that one discusses, not simply in the new year, but in somewhat more disputably the new decade, as it were. So in the first place, let's make a couple of distinctions before we answer the CRISPR specific part of the question. Firstly, we should point out that biotechnology has always delivered for medicine, for health. I hesitate to say health, because health is much more than medicine. But biotechnology has certainly delivered for medicine, independent of all the hype of genetic engineering that you are alluding to. Biotechnology has delivered by making antibiotics, by putting fermentation technologies, which are biotechnologies, front and center in our century-long effort against infectious diseases, particularly material infections. Biotechnology has delivered in transplantations. Biotechnology has delivered in the other major advance over the past two decades. Namely, biologic drugs. And in the year of COVID-19, biotechnology has always delivered since long before even antibiotics by providing vaccines. So there's no question that biotechnology has contributed certainly to medicine and a little more arguably to health in general. The real question is, what has the hype of genetic engineering, which started 20-plus years ago with the sequencing of the human genome, coupled to the earlier advances of the previous two decades in genetic engineering, in genetic manipulation more accurately, what has that brought us to today? And clearly, that is still by and large in the realm of hype. Or more optimistically in the realm of the future. In Aryabhatta, I gather, was both an astrologer and a mathematician-astronomer. So basically, what you are telling me is that those two things are the same thing looked at in two different ways. Two different sets of words. But yes, so let's point out a couple of issues involved and underline the strengths and weaknesses of the Cas9 CRISPR system, which is over these past few years, become very much the flavor of the decade. Firstly, when we engineer genetic codes, the major limitation of that engineering was that we couldn't go in specifically change one target gene in that entire genetic establishment with extremely high efficiency and come out. All the genetic engineering of the past 50 years has been a shotgun approach. Throw stuff randomly at the genome and fish out the rare possibilities where the right thing has happened. Or throw stuff. It goes in randomly at high efficiency, but you don't know where it has gone in and what other local changes it has made. These two, either you do very low efficiency, high accuracy correction, or you do very high efficiency, but extremely low accuracy and therefore other side effect modifications. This has always been the limitation of genetic engineering. Those two lead to very different kinds of practical problems in medicine. What the Cas9 CRISPR system has done over the past few years is provided a combination, provided a high efficiency way of accurate modification. So everybody therefore thought, hey, problem solved, we are going to see massive advances. And we are likely to see Cas9 CRISPR-driven massive advances over what you call the future. What they are going to be limited by is the fact that nothing in biology is absolutely certain. In other words, the Cas9 CRISPR system provides, let us say, a 99% accuracy. But a 1% off-target effect can still lead to unforeseen modifications that for the individual patient can have catastrophic consequences. So all the effort that is now going into the Cas9 CRISPR system, if you follow the literature in the development of that biotechnology, is how to keep incrementally refining the technology to reduce the off-target further and further and further. This is going to take time. And therefore, the diseases where the system is going to be implemented soonest are going to be catastrophic diseases where people are willing to take the risk. Because without that, there is no life. So you were terminally ill of a particularly. That's where this kind of technology is going to be implemented soonest. So it means that a wide usage of this can take place maybe in plants, agriculture, maybe in livestock. But when it comes to human beings, they're still at least foreseeably some way off. And maybe that way off is in the realm of the future or the realm of possibilities or in the realm of hype at the moment. So you took the angle out of my mouth. I was going to say, therefore, the places in human health where we will afford this is precisely in agriculture and animal husbandry. Remember, our audience should keep in mind that agriculture and animal husbandry are major contributors to human health. So this is going to make a lot of difference there. It's going to make a lot of difference in catastrophic diseases. But catastrophic diseases are a very small part of health where it's not going to make a difference over the next 10 years is in making taller, beautifuller, smarter people not going to happen. And I think you and I would be very much in agreement with that in any case. That shouldn't happen. So what you're saying is in this case, technology is on the other side, not those who want the wonder kind technology. It's not going to happen. It's the name of the blonde, blue eyed babies. On the same side, but a little more realistically, the so-called personalized precision medicine that you can identify exactly what I individually need for my disease and can tailor make and provide a solution for me is still going to remain in the realm of fantasy for quite some time to come. Thank you, Satyit, for being with us, discussing the recent advances in biotechnology. We'll be with you again to discuss the other issue we wanted to talk about two decades of origin of life research and what has it shown for us. Please keep watching NewsClick and do visit our website and be with us in our next discussion on this issue.