The risks of synthetic biology in the information society
That’s the issue that exploded concerning the synthetic construction of an thought-to-be extinct horsepox virus. The problem is that the instructions for making horsepox are distressingly useful for constructing a smallpox virus, a virus responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century alone until its eradication. Smallpox, you’ll recall, was eradicated through a successful worldwide effort led by the World Health Organization. After 1980 it was no longer necessary to vaccinate people against the disease and very few people alive today have been vaccinated against it.
Not surprisingly, an outbreak resulting from, say, the inadvertent or possibly intentional release of a synthetic smallpox virus from a lab could prove devastating worldwide.
Synthetic biology perhaps most clearly illustrates that the benign assumption most modern people share about new technology is dangerously misguided. We have many other examples. Recently, we’ve learned that propagandists and true believers alike have exploited Facebook to propagate obviously misleading information and outright falsehoods, an outcome that shouldn’t be all that surprising given the open nature of the platform.
We’ve now been disabused of the notion that social media will always and everywhere be a force of liberation and enlightenment. Facebook’s ongoing purge of what it regards as “fake news” and unreliable information continues; but this purge is accompanied by howls of protest from those affected who don’t agree with Facebook’s assessment, some justifiably so.
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