WORCESTER - Kevin M. Esvelt put up a slide Monday night at the College of the Holy Cross' Seelos Theater showing a photograph of a boy flailing in water.

Mr. Esvelt, assistant professor of media art and sciences and director of the Sculpting Evolution Group at MIT, where he invented a technology to deliberately alter the traits of wild populations, said there's a moral obligation to save the drowning child - but only if you know how to swim.

In the debate over whether scientists should use "gene drive" technology to suppress or eliminate animal-borne diseases just because they can, technology is the equivalent of teaching us how to swim, Mr. Esvelt said. He said that same moral obligation is there, whether it's jumping in a lake to save a drowning boy or using genetic engineering to prevent a boy across the world from contracting malaria.

Mr. Esvelt and his group at MIT invented the gene drive technology that he said could genetically reprogram certain species at a controllable, localized level. His group is working with communities on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard to eventually release genetically-altered white-footed mice, the prime carriers of Lyme disease, onto the islands. He said the mice, immunized against Lyme disease, would reproduce and pass that immunization on generationally, hopefully suppressing the spread of the disease in the process.

He said the same technology could be applied to mosquitoes that carry malaria - researchers could isolate the six species of mosquito that commonly spread malaria and use gene drive technology, which essentially encodes the animal's DNA with desired changes and instructions on how to complete the process on its own. That "DNA editing" could be manipulated so those species don't carry the disease. In New Zealand, which is dealing with an invasive rat population that has caused the extinction of dozens of native animal populations, the technology could be used to introduce rats that are all male to overwhelm the population.

"In the time I've been talking, malaria has killed 10 kids, and infected 50,000 people," Mr. Esvelt said.

He was convinced that these manipulations can and should be used to save lives and protect native species. But he acknowledged his own bias as one of the principals behind the technology, and shared concerns over how the process should be handled, morally and ethically.

One big break with traditional scientific research Mr. Esvelt said he hopes will soothe concerns is opening the door on what has almost always been a secretive process. He said his group was up front and transparent about what it was doing, and said it was important to give affected populations a voice. He said the group has held meetings with communities on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, and has even let those communities have some say in how the process moves forward. He said, for example, those communities seem receptive to his proposals, but asked that the gene drive work not use DNA that didn't come from the white-footed mice themselves.

He said it's important the discussion about gene drive applications be held in the open, particularly in regard to safeguards and potential hazards. This is technology that five years ago could never have been imagined, even in science fiction, Mr. Esvelt said. He said he believes that our future will be determined by the technology we invent and the wisdom with which we deploy it. He said he also favors a pre-registration system for experiments to add another layer of transparency, even if it's at the cost of academically prized exclusivity.

"A deliberate attempt to change the shared environment affects everyone," Mr. Esvelt said.

And what could go wrong? Mr. Esvelt cautioned the audience against envisioning large-scale biological disasters coming from the technology. He said it's fundamentally different than a virus in that it moves relatively slowly and vertically - that is, the genetic changes are only passed on generationally, and natural selection eventually reasserts itself. He likened it to a multi-stage genetic rocket. And it can be manipulated so that if Worcester was in favor of using gene drive to control a certain species, while Framingham was not, a genetically-edited threshold of sorts could be erected.

Mr. Esvelt said the risks are worth taking with gene drive technology. He said the moral consequences of choosing to use it outweigh the consequences of not using it.

Mr. Esvelt's lecture was sponsored by the college's Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.