Demos

Theme : upstream

Is politics stuck in the present? As the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill ducks and weaves through parliament, the debate around it reveals the poverty of the politics of the future. Politicians are pretty happy talking about VALUES, INTERESTS, THE EVIDENCE and even ETHICS. So abortion gets the headlines, alongside daddies for test tube babies. When it comes to the research aspects - hybrids, embryonic vs adult stem cells and all that - the evidence and the ethics are only part of the story. So Ann Widdecombe insists... from : jackstilgoe 21st May 2008
The synthesizer Demos has this morning hosted a round table with Craig Venter, controversial human genome projecteer and now spearhead of the next Next Big Thing: Synthetic Biology (or Synthetic Genomics if you prefer). Venter was engagingly open about the possibilities and pitfalls of Syn Bio, which promises to combine engineering with biology to design new lifeforms. He pointed to the possibilities of energy and fuel generation from new organisms and warned us that, if an innovative Siberian happened upon... from : jackstilgoe 23rd October 2007