The Genesis Machine

The next frontier in technology is inside our own bodies.

Synthetic  biology will revolutionize how we define family, how we identify  disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish  ourselves. This fast-growing field—which uses computers to modify or  rewrite genetic code—has created revolutionary, groundbreaking solutions  such as the mRNA COVID vaccines, IVF, and lab-grown hamburger that  tastes like the real thing.  It gives us options to deal with  existential threats: climate change, food insecurity, and access to  fuel.

But there are significant risks.

Who should decide  how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be  planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to  human enhancements? What cyber-biological risks are looming? Could a  future biological war, using engineered organisms, cause a mass  extinction event?

Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel’s riveting  examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the  background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas  posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for  us on the horizon.