The Genesis Machine

Description

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. CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction: Should Life Be a Game of Chance? PART ONE: Origin 1 | Saying No to Bad Genes: The Birth of the Genesis Machine 2 | A Race to the Starting Line 3 | The Bricks of Life 4 | God, a Church, and a (Mostly) Woolly Mammoth PART TWO: Now 5 | The Bioeconomy 6 | The Biological Age 7 | Nine Risks 8 | The Story of Golden Rice PART THREE: Futures 9 | Exploring the Recently Plausible 10 | Scenario One: Creating Your Child with Wellspring 11 | Scenario Two: What Happened When We Canceled Aging 12 | Scenario Three: Akira Gold’s “Where to Eat” 2037 13 | Scenario Four: The Underground 14 | Scenario Five: The Memo PART FOUR: The Way Forward 15 | A New Beginning Epilogue Acknowledgments Discover More About the Authors Notes Bibliography Also by Amy Webb Praise for The Genesis Machine