The May-June 2018 issue of Foreign Policy magazine includes a terrific package about the promise and perils of genetic technologies, including:
- The Ultimate Life Hacker: A Conversation With Jennifer Doudna (Doudna unlocked the potential of CRISPR — the powerful gene-editing technology — in a groundbreaking 2012 whitepaper she co-authored).
- Keep CRISPR Safe: Regulating a Genetic Revolution
- The New Killer Pathogens: Countering the Coming Bioweapons Threat.
The latter begins:
Recent breakthroughs in gene editing have generated massive excitement, but they have also reenergized fears about weaponized pathogens. Using gene-editing tools, including a system known as CRISPR, scientists are now able to modify an organism’s DNA more efficiently, flexibly, and accurately than ever before. The full range of potential applications is hard to predict, but CRISPR makes it much easier for scientists to produce changes in how organisms operate.
The essay makes a compelling case about the dangers posed not just by nation-states but by nearly anyone with a college degree and a rudimentary lab setup. Genetic technologies have become so simple and accessible that risks once deemed unthinkable because of rational actors no longer are unthinkable.
The Chief Scientist in my upcoming novel “Biohack” sounds just such a warning:
“The First World War was chemical. The Second World War was nuclear. The Third World War will be biological.”
Read the articles over at Foreign Policy (subscription required for full access). But have a seat first.