ABSTRACT

Most current techniques to deal with invasive species are ineffective or have highly damaging side effects. To this end suppression-drives based on clustered regularly inter-spaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) have been touted as a potential silver bullet for the problem, allowing for a highly focused, humane and cost-effective means of removing a target species from an environment. Suppression-drives come with serious risks, however, such that the precautionary principle seems to warrant us not deploying this technology. The focus of this paper is on one such risk – the danger of a suppression-drive escaping containment and wiping out the target species globally. Here, I argue that in most cases this risk is significant enough to warrant not using a gene-drive. In some cases, however, we can bypass the precautionary principle by using an approach that hinges on what I term the ‘Worst-Case Clause’. This clause, in turn, provides us with a litmus test that can be fruitfully used to determine what species are viable targets for suppression-drives in the wild. Using this metric in concert with other considerations, I suggest that only three species are currently possible viable targets – the European rabbit, ship rat and Caribbean Tree Frog.

摘要

目前处理入侵物种的大多数技术都无效或具有高度破坏性的副作用。为此，基于成簇的定期间隔短回文重复序列 (CRISPR/Cas9) 的抑制驱动被吹捧为解决该问题的潜在灵丹妙药，允许以高度集中、人道且具有成本效益的方式去除目标物种从一个环境。然而，抑制驱动伴随着严重的风险，因此预防原则似乎保证我们不部署这项技术。本文的重点是这样一种风险——抑制驱动器逃离遏制并在全球范围内消灭目标物种的危险。在这里，我认为在大多数情况下，这种风险足以保证不使用基因驱动。然而，在某些情况下，我们可以通过使用一种取决于我所说的“最坏情况条款”的方法来绕过预防原则。反过来，这个条款为我们提供了一个试金石，可以有效地用于确定哪些物种是野外抑制驱动的可行目标。将此指标与其他考虑因素结合使用，我建议目前只有三种物种是可行的目标——欧洲兔、船鼠和加勒比树蛙。