"Visions of the Future" Biotech Revolution

The Biotech Revolution - This episode focuses mainly on recent advances in genetics and biotechnology. Amongst other things Kaku documents advances in DNA screening, gene therapy and lab-grown organ transplants. 

List of technologies: 

Whole genome sequencing and personalized medicine
Genetic engineering
>Gene therapy
>Designer baby
Cancer Genome Project
Regenerative medicine
>Tissue engineering, Printable organs
>Cell therapy
>Immunomodulation therapy
Life extension
>Sirtuin 1
Transhumanism

Reference: Visions of the Future.

My notes

We unlocked the basic code of life in the last century.  Now we're working to manipulate it.  We shift from being passive observers, to active choreographers of nature.

The doctor is about to diagnose my medical future.  In the future we'll have a CD-ROM with a manual of our bodies.  There is the tension between wanting to know (i.e., as a scientist) and not wanting to know (i.e., as a person).

The Human Genome Project.  The stage is set for us to manipulate our genes.  Three stages of medicine: (1) germ theory, (2) antibiotics, and (3) genetic medicine.

2500 people die of cancer everyday in the US.  A map to a cancer-free future, is it possible via The Human Genome Project?

Merger between biotech and computer revolutions.  Computers can do complex biological analyses.  Biology has become a quantitative, rigorous, digital science, on par with physics.  Ray Kurzweil: Treat biology as a set of information processes.  Overcome major diseases.  

For Michio Kaku, results found no significant risk for Alzheimer's.  While there was twice-fold risk for heart disease for him, the risk for Japanese people in general is low.

Institute for Regenerative Medicine, in North Carolina.  Body shop for cars, body shop for people.  Examples of our growing mastery over nature (rf. Frankenstein).

Technology simply has to advance faster than you are aging, and you can live longer than expected.  We run out, we run down.  But we can manipulate that.  Biomolecular revolution gives us power to enrich and prolong our lives, perhaps to make us immortal.

But such power also poses serious questions.  One has to think seriously about tampering about longer lives.  The questions are why and what do you want to do with a longer life.

Tamper with human evolution itself.  We're literally able to play god.

Human cloning can happen now, but governments will not allow it.  At least not yet.  But we have to get used to the (inevitable) fact that some portion of our population will be cloned.  That is, at some point in the future.
In sports, our aim is to be better than others (rf. Performance Enhancing Drugs).  You're going to do whatever you can, for example, to nail down that big contract.

The social implications of genetic enhancement are serious.  Alter the genetic makeup of our children (i.e., designer kids).  Of the whole human race.  How far do we want to push this technology?

We could evolve in a different way.  We cannot control the drug trade, so how can we expect to control genetic trade?  Technology is pointed less outward and more inward now.  This is not some distant science fiction future, but now.

We can engineer a new species of human.  Anne Corwin, Transhumanist: Nature is always an unfinished piece of work.  Make evolution more self-directed.  Our concept of homo sapiens will dissolve.

Ray Kurzweil: We're transcending our biology, not our humanity.

We look to the future with a degree of uncertainty and with a degree of trepidation.  It's up to us how to construct our future.  It's our choice.

That's too pat, I think, as we have such diverse people.  So what we want and what we choose may be far from unified.  In fact they may very well be in conflict.

The crucial factor is to engage in reasoned, democratic debate.  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD