Everything
will be fine. Everything? Yes, everything! – Given, that synthetic biologists
all over the world are free to act as they want and in addition do so in a
responsible fashion.
This of
course is an oversimplification of what took me three months to read.
It took so
long, not because it is too boring or too complicated, too badly structured or
missing a story line. No it took me so long because all these four attributes
can be found in passages of the book. To be fair, some parts of the book are
really brilliant, rich in metaphor, thought provoking and a very interesting
summary of cutting edge technology. In other chapters it is easy to get stuck.
So the book
was like a pilgrimage for me, through the mindset of one of the leading
scientists in his field, through state-of-the-art technology and through
visions of a future full of technological solutions for our problems.
If the
cloning of the Neanderthal man, or other extinct species, mirror life or space
travel, personal eugenics or total extermination of viruses does not frighten
you then you will be at home here. Regenesis offers all of it.
Whereas my
favourite vision was the one with cheap bio-fuel derived from Cyanobacteria,
the ironic criticism of Venter’s philosophic approaches in creating Synthia
could fire back: Yes indeed: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my
works, ye Mighty, and despair.
In between
the visions (he who has visions should see the physician) and the sometimes
enthusiastically formulated technical details one can find very interesting
stories about iGEM, SYNBERC, DIYBio and drug production.
Sometimes
the book seems to be over-enthusiastic about the possible achievements of
synthetic genomics or synthetic biology. However, the authors do not fail to
mention certain drawbacks of every single industrial revolution in the past,
and also the possible ones of the future.
Do we
really have to push the frontier of technology further into the cell, into the
realm of the living. Are we doomed to join the race against exponential curves
of all kind.
The seven
decisions or questions about the future with which the book ends, sum up all its
core messages.
I won’t
tell you about them. Read yourself.
And what do
I think about all this. It is simple:
If we
change our minds we do not need to change our genomes.
