The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology

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Synopsis
Named one of The New Yorker's BEST BOOKS OF 2022 SO FARThe 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.
Copyright:
2022

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781541797932
Related ISBNs:
9781541797918
Publisher:
PublicAffairs
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Science, Business and Finance, Technology, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Medicine
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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