Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

Not to downplay what a huge achievement this is and how far the field of medicine has come, but ...

this still leaves a slight bitter taste in my mouth: If they edit specific genes one way they can also do the opposite direction. And if I understand correctly, they did with a bunch of lab rats?

Now, this and similar stuff have obviously been discussed before, essentially "12 Monkeys": Somebody releasing some runaway gene-editing mechanism, be it a virus or what not, and using it as means to mass destruction. However, that is not even what I worry about because that is nothing new, viruses have existed longer than most other kinds of life on this planet.

Instead, what just popped into my mind is more like ransomware but on your body cells. Attacker edits victims genes to some condition that is lethal within a week or so and then blackmails them in order to edit it back. Kinda like the "Carrying the Antidote"-trope, only that there is no other cure in time.

Maybe worth a Black Mirror episode ... anyway you heard / read it here first ;)

edit: To the people downvoting, why not engage in the conversation instead? I am not saying we shouldn't be doing this, just that this is a fun crime scenario in a movie. What is wrong with that?

If you wanted to do that you could just release a cancer-causing agent and it would similar mess with their DNA and kill them much more effectively at a fraction of the cost. Or just blow them up or something. Harming the masses in such a roundabout way won't leave the realm of science fiction because it is so much less effective and so much more difficult to do than existing methods. Not worth worrying about even in theory.