Reid ends by saying that the benefits of synthetic biology outweigh its potential negative impacts.
During a 2014 MIT conference on synthetic biology, FBI agent Carmine Nigro warned that synbio tech could “…reduce our population by significant percentages”.
Synthetic biology, according to a 2005 European Commission paper is “…the engineering of biology… the synthesis of complex, biologically based (or inspired) systems which display functions that do not exist in nature.”
Geneticist Craig Venter is a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology. In 2010 the media hailed his team’s success in creating “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”
Synthetic foods are also being created with the technology. As of 2014, Synbio food ingredients have quietly made their way on to store shelves. Companies like Evolva that are pushing the technology suggest that the products are “not genetically modified”.
New gene editing tech has also sparked a biological arms race.
Fears of an engineered virus released on the planet have grown as the technology advances.
The idea that a rogue group or individual could release an engineered biological weapon is not out of the realm of possibility...read more>>>..