num_pages: 368
description: 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 fieldwhich uses computers to modify or rewrite genetic codehas 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 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 Hessels 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.
language: English
title: The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology
publisher: PublicAffairs