Need for legalization of marijuana in India.

 The unintelligible involvement of cannabis in schedule I

It wouldn’t be untrue to say that the marijuana prohibition had racist origins. Harry Anslinger, the then commissioner of the federal bureau of narcotics of the US, made unscientific claims saying, marijuana is a violence-inducing drug and blamed the surge in cannabis usage on the Black and Hispanic communities. These allegations took over the American media like wildfire. Highlighting the word marijuana instead of cannabis, the American media created a strong connection between the plant and the newly arrived Mexican immigrants. With all the bad press and political criticism surrounding cannabis, in the 1970s, under Richard Nixon’s presidency, the Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) enlisted marijuana as a schedule I substance alongside heroin, ecstasy, and LSD. Schedule I implies, “the substance has no acceptable medical use and has a high potential for abuse.”  Even though the use of cannabis was prevalent pretty much everywhere, the Black and the Hispanics were significantly more likely to get arrested. 

Unlike any other country, cannabis or ganja had been the way of life in India, both socially and religiously. But only until the year 1985. During the 1980s the US was campaigning for a global law against all drugs. During these times India desperately needed the United States as an ally. Having no other alternative, the Indian government outlawed cannabis consumption under the US’s pressure and passed the narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances act in the year 1985.

The science of Cannabis

Cannabis embodies two main chemical components, THC(TetraHydroCannabinol) and CBD(Cannabidiol). THC, the agonist, binds to a receptor and makes it produce a biological response aka “high”. CBD, being the antagonist, blocks the action of THC. Research has shown that it is possible to produce cannabis with varying proportions of THC and CBD, i.e, high THC strains, balanced THC and CBD strains, high CBD strains.

Alcohol, Cannabis, and Tobacco

Two of the most lethal drugs that are neither scheduled nor made illegal, “Tobacco and Alcohol” Out of 8 million people that get succumbed to the aftermath of tobacco abuse, a colossal 12.5%, i.e., 1 million are Indians. Making tobacco the leading cause of death in India. 2,60,000 people suffocate and die from alcohol strangulation every year in India while 3 million die worldwide. So, why aren’t alcohol and tobacco prohibited from using you ask Because combined, they generate a gargantuan 3 trillion rupees to the Indian government every year. We know for sure tobacco consumption causes Lung cancer, Oral cancer, CardioVascular diseases, and at least 10 more types of cancer. We also know for sure that alcohol consumption causes liver diseases, heart diseases, cancer, peripheral nerve disease, and a lot more. Even though they are extremely dangerous, nobody is seriously proposing to prohibit them.

source: World Health Organization

Allegedly, the consumption of excess marijuana usage is said to cause impaired cognitive development, impaired psychomotor performance, and impaired fetal development when used during pregnancy. But, the studies that support these allegations are outdated and inconclusive. In recent times, with countries moving towards marijuana legalization or medical marijuana legalization, cancer patients who consume cannabis find themselves with reduced nausea and increased appetite helping them get through chemotherapy. Studies show cannabis can be used as an anti-depressant, it can help reduce anxiety attacks, it can help people suffering from PTSD and the list goes on.

Source: medicalmarijuana.org

Need for marijuana legalization in India

Despite being illegal, Delhi is the world’s 3rd most cannabis consumer with Mumbai standing 6th on that list. This displays the fact that no matter how strict the rules are, it will not be impossible to find someone selling a  few grams of pot for a few bucks. Most importantly, the criminalization of marijuana is what makes it easy for the underaged to find and consume it. This could be destructive to children’s well being because there is not enough research to show what the long-term effects are on children consuming marijuana. 

Source; statista.com

Portugal, the first country to decriminalize all drugs, treated drug addicts as chronic patients, and instead of locking them up, they were sent to rehabs. This so-called “Portugal’s drug strategy” has shown a significant reduction in drug usage and deaths due to drug overdose.

The only solution to the underage-marijuana problem is to legalize marijuana. It is often more difficult for kids to buy legal drugs than illegal ones because the sellers could be paying a heavy fine and even lose their license for selling it to the underaged. Also, legalization does not necessarily mean endorsing cannabis, It means the government taking responsibility for the risks it poses, exercising control over cannabis mainly when it comes to the underaged. Legalizing marijuana also opens doors for tons of research and also seizes drug dealers from exploiting the underaged.

All things considered, “The blatant suppression of abundant medical benefits that can be obtained by cannabis in the view of the fact that the origin of the outlaw had racist roots, it is utterly unjust for it to be illegal and requires a thoroughly studied and researched reform backed by scientific evidence.” Thank you for reading.

P.S. Don’t want to be a buzzkill here. I enjoy drinking too. But the evidence, you cannot run away from it.

References:

• Ethan B. Russo; CHEMISTRY & BIODIVERSITY – Vol. 4 (2007); History of Cannabis and Its Preparations in Saga, Science, and Sobriquet

• Willy Pedersen, Torbjorn Skardhamar; Cannabis, and crime: findings from a longitudinal study; Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo and Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research; Doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02719.x

• Leslie Iversen; Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Cannabis and the brain; DOI: 10.1093/brain/awg143; April 2003

• Jose´ Alexandre Crippa, Antonio Waldo Zuardi, Rocio Martı´n-Santos, Sagnik Bhattacharyya, Zerrin Atakan, Philip McGuire2, and Paolo Fusar-Poli; Cannabis and anxiety: a critical review of the evidence; Human Pharmacology; DOI: 10.1002/hup.1048

• Alan C. Ogbome, Ph.D., Reginald G. Smart, Ph.D., Timothy Weber, B .A. & Carol Birchmore-Timney, M.A.; Who is Using Cannabis as a Medicine and Why: An Exploratory Study.

• J. THOMAS UNGERLEIDER, MD, THERESE ANDRYSIAK, RN, LYNN FAIRBANKS, Ph.D., JAMES GOODNIGHT, MD, GREGORY SARNA, MD, AND KAY JAMISON, Ph.D.; Cannabis and Cancer Chemotherapy; American Cancer Society

• www.Who.int

• www.business-standard.com

• www.statista.com

From take off to landing - ''How do airplanes fly?'' An amateur edition

Alright, time to brush your science basics before we climb aboard. As this is an amateur edition, I will try to limit myself to Newton's laws to help you have a basic understanding of how airplanes fly.

 Newton's laws explained intelligibly:

The first law:  "Static things don't move unless something pushes them and moving things don't stop unless something stops them." So, you might be thinking, when I release the accelerator in my car and don't push the brakes, the car should keep on moving, right? wrong. Here on earth, the car eventually stops because of a resistive force due to friction between two surfaces. When you rub your hands, you feel a force acting against the direction of motion called frictional force. So when you release the accelerator, the frictional force between the tire and road the road that acts against the direction of motion, makes sure that the car is brought to rest. In airplanes, even though the presence of air is the reason why airplanes fly, there is a resistance force generated between the surface of the airplane and air. Aerodynamicsts call it 'drag' which is nothing but force generated by friction.

Also, If you kick a ball in space, it will keep on going(forever) until it approaches an obstacle like an asteroid or a gravitational influence of a planet or a star. This happens because of no presence of an atmosphere, hence no air, hence no friction.

The second law: "The amount of force required to move a body increases with the mass of the body that has to be moved" Which means if you use the same amount of force to move a chair and a sofa, the chair will have more acceleration than the sofa.

The third law: "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." A swimmer pushes the water backward and water pushes the swimmer in forwards direction. also, when a mountain climber pulls down the rope, the rope pulls up on the mountain climber.

Now that we are pretty confident with Newton's laws, let's step into Aeronautics.

There are four forces that act on an airplane:

Source: Google images

The weight of the airplane acts towards the center of the earth due to gravitational attraction. Drag, among many other reasons, is mainly generated due to frictional forces between the surface of the airplane and the air flowing over it. which implies, more surface of the aircraft is exposed to air, more amount of drag the airplane experiences. (There are many types of drags that slow down the aircraft such as, lift-induced drag, wave drag, etc., which we will not be studying here). Apparently, from my experience, most people I meet(not my classmates. of course.), when I ask them, "Do you know what makes an airplane fly?'', the most common answer I receive is, THE ENGINES. Most of you are partially right but not completely. Engines do not lift the plane upwards, They just provide thrust force which helps the airplane to move in a forward direction. 

Lift force, the protagonist of this article is the main reason why an airplane takes off and stays up there. So, how is this lift force generated? The main reason lies in the shape of the wing. When you take a slice of the wing, also called the cross-section of the wing, it looks like this,

This shape is called an airfoil and the lines shown in the above image are called streamlines which basically denote the direction of the airflow or the path followed by the air particles. When the engines generate thrust and move the airplane in a forward direction, air flows over the wing like this.

What basically happens here is, the airfoil is shaped in such a way that, it pushes the air downwards. And, referring to Newton's third law, the air pushes the airfoil upwards generating lift force thus, helping the aircraft to take off and stay there. This implies if there were no atmosphere present on our planet, the airplanes that are designed the way we use them today would never take flight.

Also, you may have observed many race cars having a rear wing called a spoiler. These wings are designed exactly opposite to the ones in aircraft which  looks like this,

These spoilers push the air upwards which eventually resulting in the air pushing the spoiler downwards generating a force called the 'downforce'.

came this far? thanks for reading. feel free to use the comments section and also if you are interested, please subscribe to my posts by entering your e-mail address in the follow-by-Email available on the 3rd box on the top right.

*P.S. This phenomenon can also be explained using Bernoulli's principle and variation of pressure distribution.*

The James Webb Space Telescope.

How many times have you looked at the night sky and wondered, "What's out there?" well, that curiosity has led the humanity from shaping constellations to launching telescopes into space to answer the biggest questions of the universe. Talking about space telescope, I have to first tell you why "Space" telescopes are actually necessary. I will put you in a situation, Let us assume that you are placed in a room that has a single, large, transparent-mirrored, window and I will give you three cases.

1)You are looking out of the after it just Rained.
2)You are looking at the window on a normal day.
3)You are looking out of an open window.

Now If I ask you which one of the three views was clear, the answer would obviously be the third case. When telescopes are on Earth, Earth's atmosphere acts as that window after it just rained. So, Telescopes are launched into space to open the window to the cosmos! Coming to the James Webb Space Telescope, It is named after James Edwin Webb who was the second administrator of NASA and NASA quotes the telescope as the "Scientific Successor" of Hubble Space Telescope which not only provided us an astounding view of the universe but also only because of that telescope do we  know that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and how planets form and more. And, Hubble space telescope was launched in 1990!! The major upgrade of the JWST from The Hubble Telescope is The JWST will be collecting the Infrared spectrum of light where Hubble collects the visible and UV spectrum. This is because Light has to travel through space to reach us and after traveling all that distance  the visible spectrum gets absorbed by dust where the infrared can penetrate through dust and give us a better view like in this image,

Source: jswt.nasa.gov

James Webb Space Telescope is an international collaboration of NASA, European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency whose development efforts will be managed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The James Webb Space Telescope has 7 basic parts as shown in this figure. Let us discuss every part in detail...

Image Source: Wikipedia

The Primary Mirror: The Primary mirror will be consisting of 18  Hexagonal segments with each 6.5 meters across which is 7 times the size of Hubble's primary telescope and weighs 705Kg. All of the mirrors are made up of Beryllium coated with Gold. Gold for reflecting the infrared light and Beryllium because it's light and strong and it's resistance to high temperatures. This Primary mirror collects all the light and reflects it into the secondary mirror.

The Secondary Mirror: Unlike the Primary mirror, the secondary mirror consists of a perfectly rounded convex lens which reflects the light directly into the ISIM.

ISIM; ISIM, which expands to Integrated Space Science Module is the core of the telescope consisting of four science instruments that detect the light from galaxies and stars.

Star Trackers: These Star trackers are used to guide the Telescope to the stars that we want to know about.

Sun Shield; As the telescope is exposed to various heat threats like  Sun, Sun's heat reflected by the Earth and the moon, Sun shield or Heat shield protects the Telescope from that heat.

Back Plane; Backplane acts as the support for the primary mirror. Like a tripod to a camera here on earth.

Space Craft Bus; It is used to transport the telescope like a bus transports us from one place to other on Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope with the size of a Tennis court is Scheduled to launch during the Spring of 2019 in a Heavy payload launch vehicle, Ariane 5 from French Guiana. It will be launched into the orbit which is called the L2 orbit whose Apogee(furthest point from Earth) is 1.5 Million Km! that is 4 times away from the moon for a better view than the Hubble that was launched in the lower Earth orbit. If Everything goes well, this telescope will be able to solve the mysteries of the universe and will be able to answer the questions like "Are we alone in the Universe?" and "How are galaxies born?" by looking far back in time and distance. 

Source: jswt.nasa.gov

"The Indian Education System"

Hey Everyone! and here we are with a topic that is not actually "science" but, is a major threat to science if it continues the way it is... Also, this article is my personal opinion on the Indian Education System based on my walk-through experience.
  I'd like to split this article into 3 major parts, 1) Schooling 2) Intermediate 3) Under Graduation. So, Let's get right into it,

First things first, "Schooling is the base of education" and School, this is the place where children are made to sit in rows with a finger on their lips and listen to whatever "Bla Bla Bla" the teacher does for hours. This is the place where children are made to memorize answers to questions and print them on a paper during exams. "Is school educating children or manufacturing printing press machines?" This is the place where Children are told what to think and not how to think. And, "what is the point of talking about freedom of speech and action when freedom of thought is being spoonfed". This is the place where teacher won't tell you why you're learning it but tells you how to memorize it. This is the place where teachers yell "Don't talk to each other" Seriously? There are 2-3 languages included in their syllabus. How are they supposed to learn to talk a language when they aren't supposed to communicate with each other? This is the place where History is a subject. I mean, teaching is fine. You got to know what happened in the past. But, why do they have to remember the dates and facts and print them? And, Art is totally dead here. Schools with Guitar classes, Dance lessons, etc., are a drop in the ocean in India! And India is one of those countries with incredible artistic talent. And the Education system is one reason why art is dying in India.

Intermediate, Well firstly, let me agree that it was 2 years of a tragedy of my life. When I chose maths and science as my field, I was pretty excited that I would be learning new things every day. But NO! instead, I was taught how to solve a multiple choice question in the shortest amount of time. There was no science at all! Okay, let me do it the professional way, Admitting the fact that most of the entrance exams are MCQ type... "The probability of choosing the right answer in most of the MCQ tests is 1/4" You know what that means? It means, even if you pick the dumbest person on the planet, the likelihood of him giving the right answer to a question is 1 out of every four times. Yeah, probability says it all! MCQ test is not the right way to test a student's intelligence. But, it is the perfect way if you are looking for those luckiest students. I am looking at you, "engineering colleges". Here, competition is given more importance than collaboration. Is it better to work together or compete against each other?  And the reservation system? I don't even want to talk about it. Art in Intermediate? don't even ask. Art in intermediate is a micro drop in the ocean!!

And here comes my favorite part, Engineering(Under Graduation). Firstly, Look a the Statistics shown in this image,

source: Google

Do you know the main reason behind that stupendous unemployment? "lack of communication skills!" Remember at the beginning of this article I told schooling is the base of education? Well, when the base is rotten, how do you expect the building to stand? And guess what? Every one of those engineering graduates had English in their syllabus for at least 12 years!! Then why do they lack communication skills right? I say, "The moment education system starts treating English as a language instead of teaching it as a subject, this will keep on happening" And, Laboratories in Engineering colleges. It is a place where students prove theories that are already proven, Measure quantities that are already measured. What is the point of repeating stuff? why shouldn't they try something new?


Conclusion, The education system in India lacks  just two things,

1.Education
2.System

Came this far? Thanks for reading. Let me know in the comment section below if you want me to post more of these "personal view" articles on my blog. This is Anirudh Dasari Signing off... 

The Hyperloop.

Hey Everyone! It's been a while... Remember in my article about Elon Musk, I told that I will give a detailed explanation about "The Hyperloop" in another article? well, here it is, "The Hyperloop" let's get into it...

We have all traveled in Boats, Trains, Cars, Airplanes which are basically the four means of transport available right now. And if Hyperloop ends up successful(which it almost already did but with a prototype not with a real one with real measurements), it will be the fifth means of transport. Before figuring out what Hyperloop is and how it works let me run you through these basics,

I am pretty sure you all know what a motor is. Basically, it consists of two major components. One, The stator which is stationary and the other is the Rotor which is a rotating part. The Stator is an electromagnet that creates a magnetic field on applying electricity and rotates the rotor. Coming to the Hyperloop, the rotor and stator are not circular but linear. Here, have a look at this picture to have a better idea of what I am saying,

Hence the rotor in the Hyperloop is linear, The motion of the Pod or the Capsule in which the passengers sit is a straight line. And TA-DA! Transportation!! Sounds Easy? considering the fact that the capsule travels through a tube that has an air pressure, friction due to air, and needs a power source, Nah! I just started writing the article.

So, What makes this pod in a tube thing so complex? Well, there are the problems that need to be addressed to get this thing up and running.

1.The Kantrowitz limit
2.Friction
3.Power Source


1.The Kantrowitz limit:-

Though his name sounds so gut-busting, It's is a serious problem when you are in a pod that travels in a tube. Not funny. So, what is Kantrowitz limit? Let me explain in a simple, understandable way excluding those hard terms and unlike those lecturers in our colleges. Ever messed with an empty syringe? Yes? okay, then this is going to be easy! when you push the plunger of a syringe you will feel the pressure building up inside the barrel don't you? well, that phenomenon is called The Kantrowitz limit and the syringe is similar to the pod in the tube. Pressure builds up in front of the pod too!

Source: SpaceX.com

Now, how to solve this? there is a compressor at the leading edge of the pod to ingest(suck in) air and digest(leave out) from the bottom of the pod which ultimately leads to the levitation of the pod!

2.Friction:-

Friction is the resistance caused when two objects move against eachother., In this case, the pod and the air in the tube. Friction is not only going to slow down the pod but is also going to heat up the pod.
As we all know that that whole problem arises due to the presence of air in the tube, Hyperloop has the most undomestic approach to solve this problem, Eliminating the air, Killing it!(Not literally though) by creating a near vacuum condition in the tube and also making the front portion streamlined to reduce drag(Frictional force).

3.The Power Source:-

As we discussed at the beginning of this article that Hyperloop is basically a "Linear Induction Motor". Well, a motor requires magnetism and magnetism require electricity. So, How to power this thing? a 9Volt battery? wow! you guessed it wrong. The answer is solar panels. I am serious There are solar panels attached to the top of the tube throughout the length of the tube which actually generates power that more than the Pod consumes!!

Now that we have jumped all the hurdles in our way, let us get into the statistics that this thing might reach,

The Presumed 

Statistics:-

Don't forget to tighten your seat belts when you are in this thing! because this is going to reach mind-blowing speeds of 1200kmph! Damn! right? Also, It is going to cost less than Air Travel they say! The construction might cost around 64 Billion US$ and according to a Matlab(Matrix Laboratories) simulation, the G's experienced by the passenger is ≤ 0.5g's!! which is equal to the g's experienced when a car takes a sharp turn!!

As always, This is Anirudh Dasari Signing off and, have a happy new year everyone!
Thanks for your time!

Death of the Universe || Part 1 || The Big Crunch

Before talking about the ways the universe is gonna die, we should know how it all started. The Big Bang is scientifically proven and the evidence is pretty convincing. Let me explain how it is true,

I guess everyone learnt "The Relativistic Doppler Effect" (Doppler effect in light) in their secondary education already. For those who didn't, here is a brief explanation, Let us suppose that you are standing on the side of a road and a car passes by. When the car is approaching you from a distant point, you will experience a significant amount of increase in sound. Also, when it is going away, you will experience decreasing volume. It means, by knowing whether the sound is increasing or decreasing, you can tell the object is approaching towards you or is moving away from you This is "Doppler effect in sound". Coming to the Doppler effect in light, "If a body emitting light is moving away from you, It's light will shift towards the red side of the visible spectrum i.e, it'll undergo a Redshift. If a body is moving towards you, it'll undergo a Blueshift. What does all of this have to do with the Big Bang right?

Yeah, this guy called Edwin Hubble, an American Astronomer, discovered that the galaxies are apparently moving away from the milky way galaxy and, the farther away they are, the faster they are moving away. The ratio of how fast the galaxy is moving away(speed) to how far the galaxy is(distance) is always constant and is called the Hubble Constant. So, now from the observations, we know that the everything in the universe is moving away from us i.e, The universe is expanding. It means, All the other stars and galaxies were closer to you yesterday than they are today and they will be tomorrow. So, If we go back in time, the universe is closer and closer and closer. According to the calculations made by the astronomers, ~(13.798±0.037) Billion years ago every galaxy, every star, every planet, every atom was at the same point. At this point, time was wibbly wobbly the physics as we know it made no sense. All the forces, i.e, Gravitational, Strong nuclear force, Weak nuclear force, ElectroMagnetic force were indifferentiable. As the pressure is very high, the temperatures were very high which was ~(10^30  Degree Celsius). For unknown reasons, The forces split accompanied by an enormous release of energy and rapid increase in space. Which is called The Big Bang. This is how the universe as we know it exists.

Now we know that the universe is expanding. But, Is the expansion speeding up? or slowing down? or moving at a constant speed? Let's get into that too. When you look into a telescope and point it towards any galaxy, the light coming from the galaxy tells you two things,  it's position in the spectrum tells you how fast the galaxy is moving away from you and it's brightness tells you how far away it is from you. If you look at a single galaxy and note down its speed every day,  It would take a million years for you to know the expansion is speeding up or slowing down. Also, when you look at a galaxy you not looking at it as it is now. Light takes time to travel. You are actually looking back in time. So, this implies that "Looking at different galaxies at different distance is a rough proxy of looking at the same galaxy at different times" and with the observations made if you plot a graph between, time and speed of a galaxy there are three likely possibilities, One, you'll get a straight line which means the universe is expanding at a constant speed or an increasing speed curve or a decreasing speed curve. For a long time, Astronomers thought that the expansion of the universe is slowing down. But to their surprise, after doing the calculations and plotting the graph they discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating! Astrophysicists say that the reason behind the acceleration of the expanding universe is "Dark Energy" which is yet to be studied and no one knows what it actually is.

Let's revise what all we know till now,

We know that The universe as we know it started with a Big Bang, The universe is expanding, The expansion of the universe is accelerating. The question that might arise in all of your heads is "Will the universe ever slow down or not?" Well, it depends. If the density of the universe is greater than the critical density(Critical density is the density at which the universe is at balance and stops expanding), then the gravity takes over whatever the force accompanies the expansion of the universe. And when I say gravity takes over, I mean, the stars and galaxies will come back closer and closer and collapse into a single point again. i.e, THE BIG CRUNCH. What if this keeps on repeating? after collapse another Big Bang? and another Big Crunch? there is a name for it, "The Big Bounce"

Oh! you came this far? Damn! that's a lot of patience. Thank you!. This is Anirudh Dasari Signing off.

CRISPR - Everything you need to know.

Bacteria Vs. Viruses The war that has been continuing since the dawn of life. Yeah! the minor diseases that you suffer from like Cold, Fever, Stomach ache etc., and the major diseases like, Genetical disorder, HIV/AIDS, Cancer etc., are the result of the fight between Virus and Bacteria.

Let's zoom into the microscopic level and see what's actually going on through out these millions of years. When a virus tries to infect a bacteria, It inserts its own genetic code into the bacteria so that is can use the Bacteria as a factory or take control over the Bacteria. The bacteria tries to resist but fails most of the time because it's protection tools are too weak. But sometimes the bacteria might survive only when it uses it's most effective anti-virus attack. That is bacteria stores the genetic code(that is inserted by the virus) in a Genetic code Archive called CRISPR. When a bacteria gets infected again by another virus, This is where the CAS9 protein which is in the bacteria comes into action. The CAS9 protein acts more like a genetic surgeon. It compares every bit of  DNA code in the bacteria to the DNA code of the virus that had been stored in the Genetic code archive and once found, The CAS9 protein will immediately cut the DNA( that is inserted by the virus).

Whoa! explaining that was hard!! that is a bit cinematic though :-p. So, from what we have discussed till now, "CAS9 is protein within a Bacteria that acts as a molecular tool that can either add or cuts DNA." Not until did the geneticists discovered that this whole process of detection and elimination of DNA is programmable, did they realize that there are a lot of benefits using that process. And they named the process CRISPR. The expanded form of CRISPR is, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Phew! that's a mouthful. That's why we call it CRISPR. Also, after CRISPR was found, The costs of genetic research fell down by 99% and CRISPR is the cheapest way too. It also reduced the time taken for Research from few years to few weeks!

So, "What's the big deal?" with this very technique in a few decades, we will be able to end suffering from diseases, suffering from genetic disorders, also we will be able to Design babies! (you could literally go to a hospital and ask, "I want a kid with 20/20 eye sight, best immune system, and with an IQ greater than Albert Einstein!)  We will be able to cure Cancer or HIV/AIDS with a single injection! and a lot!

Let me just give some practical examples of CRISPR in use,

THE ERADICATION OF MALARIA! yes, you've read it right. Malaria is the most dreadful disease the humans have ever encountered. millions of people die every decade due to Malaria. According to the statistics, at least 5 people might have died(around the world) since you started reading this article! So, how does CRISPR solve this problem? to answer that question we should first know how malaria spreads. Mosquitoes host a parasite called Plasmodium that lives in the salivary gland of mosquito and waits for the mosquito to bite an organism(let's consider humans in this case) and enters into the organism. Firstly it affects the liver, then the Red blood cells and ultimately leads to death. With CRISPR we could make mosquitoes immune to Plasmodium by making slight changes to the mosquito's DNA. And with a genetic technique called "The Gene Drive", we could make 99% of the offsprings of that immune mosquitoes to be immune to Plasmodium. These mosquitoes do exist in laboratories today and yet to be released into the environment. The geneticists and BrainStorming over Whether or not to release the mosquitoes into the environment. 'cause we never know what the consequences are gonna be right?

Also, by just changing a bit of DNA code that is responsible for their color in these rats the geneticists changed white rats into black ones.

Using CRISPR to change the color of an organism.

Coming to the ethical issues, whether or not to use CRISPR because using this technique to its true potential, you would be actually able to Reverse Aging! and editing genes of an Embryo will not only affect that one person but also to all of his descendants. If this technology goes to the wrong hands, the consequences would be catastrophic! Geneticists are in an ethical dilemma whether or not to develop this technique, CRISPR.

Thank you for coming this far. I really appreciate it! This is Anirudh Dasari Signing off...