Unleashing the plague? > SundayPaper.com > The Sunday Paper :: All you need to know.

Unleashing the plague? > SundayPaper.com > The Sunday Paper :: All you need to know.: "In layman’s terms, synthetic biology, or 'syn bio,' as hipsters like to call it, is recreating life from its most basic building blocks. Not human beings, but certainly organisms, and that ability alone has made regulating the new science the focus of President Barack Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which met at Emory University last week.

According to the Federal Register, the commission’s job is to “develop and finalize recommendations concerning any actions that the federal government should take to ensure that America reaps the benefits of this developing field of science while identifying appropriate ethical boundaries and minimizing risks.”

Syn bio’s potential use is both awesomely beneficial and horrifically destructive. It can be used to create organisms that produce biofuel or eat oil spills, for example. But it may also be used to create a plague. Not yet, but, given the widespread practice of syn bio, perhaps sooner than one would think."