ABSTRACT
Chapter 5, “Synthetic Biology: Extreme Genetic Engineering,” is the only portion of the book to describe more general questions of bioengineering. This is essential to the narrative because techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9 gene manipulation, first developed in the nonhuman and even non-animal realm, are being contemplated for use in genetic engineering of prospective people. Synthetic biology entrepreneurs seek to create life using computer-synthesized DNA or even with DNA analogues. Promoters have claimed that industrially cultivated genetically engineered bacteria are capable of producing anything traditionally harvested from a plant or animal. Though a source of potential fortunes for bio-corporations in the industrial north, synthetic biology has the potential to destroy livelihoods and communities in the agricultural south. And, since the fuel for these putatively synthetic organisms is sugar, vast expanses of the world’s forested areas are being transformed from pristine regions to commercial sugar cane production. Already, consumption of products of synthetic biology, from fuels and cleansers to foods, fragrances and cosmetics, is both part of the new field’s trial-and-error experimental process and its industrial platform. The tacit and sometimes explicit rejection of valuation of natural biological systems refined through eons of evolution over synthetic ones modified for narrow purposes has unknown health hazards, potentially devastating ecological impacts, and carries ominous implications for proposed uses in human reproduction.
