A Word Processor for the Genome?
Forbes reports on Codon Devices, a new startup that plans to offer tools to make gene manipulation as intuitive as manipulating text with a word processor or a photo with Photoshop.
If this works, it's one more step towards what Freeman Dyson likes to call "the domestication of biotechnology." (I loved the analogy he made when he spoke at OScon last year. He referred to the PC revolution as "the domestication of computers," and looked forward to an era when amateur flower and animal breeders could use similarly "domesticated" genetic engineering tools to improve their work in the same way people now use computers in the home.) Technology moves from the labs to the startup to the ordinary user. Seems far out to project that for biotech, which currently has an aura not only of difficulty but also of risk, but I do think it will eventually happen.
BTW, Drew Endy, who spoke at ETech earlier this year about his work on building a registry of re-usable genetic components, is one of the co-founders of Codon Devices.
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Yeah, I worry about this too. (See the article on Freeman Dyson's comments on OScon linked to above, where I asked him this question.) He points out that you can already get a lot of this stuff done already.
That being said, the old saw "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" has a fair amount of truth to it. This kind of technology will be available. Getting ahead of the fools and possible wrong doers is the answer, not trying to put a finger in the dyke.
The future is always risky. That's why images like surfing should be so important to how we think about it. The sea can overwhelm a surfer in a minute. But we go out anyway.
See my long-ago book about science-fiction writer Frank Herbert for more on this idea. Full text is available on tim.oreilly.com.
I dislike over-reacting to anything, but I worry when the potential for destruction is so great. I'm a borderline Libertarian, but it's hard to reconcile that political view with the possibility that some mentally unstable individual might just decide to try his hand at eliminating all life on earth... and actually having a decent shot at it.
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Bob Aman [06.02.05 11:54 AM]
I can't remember where I mentioned this, but somewhere awhile back I predicted that as soon as this kind of technology existed (amateurs being able to easily modify a genome) that it would cause the near extinction of mankind. Probably a wee tiny itty bit overreactive, but perhaps not very far off the mark?
Consider this: there are currently orders of magnitude more computer viruses in existance than there used to be, with numerous variations of each. One of the main reasons that there are so many computer viruses today is because people started writing virus creation toolkits. They brought down the barriers to entry for highly malicious behavior. If we make it so that any irate Average Joe can take a quick blood sample of a kid with chicken pox and turn it into a highly contagious varient that, say, causes adults to go sterile and gives em a short-lived, but nasty rash -- if suddenly half the population of the world can go sterile -- how much of a chance do we really stand? And lets not even get started on what happens when people start playing with something really nasty like Marburg or Ebola.
I'm all for genetically modified food, creating new useful species, and the whole shebang. But creating new viruses and bacteria (which is incidentally the first place they start with this kind of research due to the comparative simplicity of their DNA/RNA) is just asking for trouble. When they create a fool-proof cure for viral infection, including the new nasties we may accidentally (or intentionally) create, then perhaps the benefit might outweigh the risks, but until then, I think this is a pretty big mistake. Not that I really trust the pharmaceutical companies, but I'd rather let them deal with this kind of stuff. At least there's some level of accountability there.
Do we really want to sell nukes at the corner store?