Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

How would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?

I'm not sure you would. I mean, I'm sure you could somehow, but at this point so much of what needs to be done is basic research, and really can be done well in that context. There aren't many things that are ready to leave the context of a research lab and into commercialization. We've got some notable disasters with Theranos, and even the YC funded Taxa (glowing plant - that was a farce from the get-go, but they're doing some potentially interesting stuff now).

As far as education, it's not something you can learn by yourself, it just isn't. Most of the methods in a biological wet lab are very far from standardized and need a great deal of troubleshooting. Most post-docs in a new lab spend a couple months just trying to get basic stuff working that they've done dozens of times before. It's hard. You need people around you with experience and perspective, and doctorate programs are likely the only place you're going to get that kind of training.

I think there are a lot of people that want to approach biology with a CS mindset, especially the people interested in synthetic biology, but that rarely bears fruit. It could get to that place eventually, but there's a lot of ground to cover. In that sense I agree with Elon that, despite the huge impact genetic engineering could have, it's not the next thing because we're not ready yet. There's still too much that's fundamental to biological problems that we simply don't understand, and solving things in one species usually doesn't translate very far across taxa.