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There are certainly dangers associated with synthetic biology and the spread of low-cost at-home biology tools, but this is a ridiculous fluff piece devoid of a
by frisco 15y ago
There are certainly dangers associated with synthetic biology and the spread of low-cost at-home biology tools, but this is a ridiculous fluff piece devoid of any real scientific content. Even if a low-cost "DNA printer" could be used by individuals to simply synthesize a protein (it doesn't work like that, by the way), the idea that you'd proceed to download an unknown sequence off the internet, express it, and eat it is ridiculous.
I'm not sure what a "weaponized virus" means in this regard. "Reformatting your brain"? "Booting DNA" maliciously in a specific person? We're probably going to see whole new worlds of possibilities involving bioterrorism in the next hundred years, but this article is singularitard nonsense.
- beagle3 15y ago> the idea that you'd proceed to download an unknown sequence off the internet, express it, and eat it is ridiculous. While I find it just as ridiculous as you do, I am also looking in disbelief as people trust for-profit corporations with everything from their complete financial data (Mint), correspondence (Gmail) social life (Facebook) -- and furthermore, often publicly give enough info through e.g. Facebook to every burglar so that they know when it is a good time to come burgle. So we might both wake up in ten years to people downloading sequences off the net, printing and eating them.