[88e282102ae2e5b]

The danger of using CRISPR could have, in principle, been worse than it turned out to be, sure. But the fact is, CRISPR has been used to modify living organisms, and those organisms don't have any more mutations than average, and they seem to be just as healthy as unmodified organisms (unless the edit itself is deleterious).

We might find out some day that there's some behavior of DNA and DNA-binding proteins that CRISPR interferes with, but if it does exist, the effect has to be small enough that we wouldn't notice it.

edit: I should clarify, there's still work left to do to ensure CRISPR's safety. It needs to be looked at in more cell types, and work in somatic cells in adult organisms is still in its early days. My point is just that putting CRISPR into a cell, in some scenarios, doesn't cause substantial problems.