Humanity’s two faces

An 18-month-old girl in England who was born without hearing can now hear almost perfectly, after a brief procedure that resulted from decades of research. Using a harmless virus to carry a specific gene into Opal Sandy's ear, doctors at a Cambridge hospital compensated for the faulty gene with which she had been born. This leap in medicine was made public at the same time that the leader of "the world's greatest nuclear power" (as Putin describes Russia) warned of the "danger of worldwide conflict." Thousands of children have been killed in Gaza. And many scientists have expressed the fear that the planet's heating is greater than the efforts to control it, posing a threat to humanity itself. 

While science progresses geometrically, promising longer and better lives, humanity's efforts to govern itself and to manage the Earth's resources remain trapped in mentalities and...