I Think It's a Combination of Things Uh...

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In the seventies people were very scared about what would happen if we put a human gene into a bacteria and it started producing whatever protein or whatever. It turned out nobody had any suspicion of this but in nineteen seventy seven it was discovered that there's a quality of difference between the genes in a human or in any multicellular organism with those in a microbe. The key thing is that the fears which led to very stringent by security protocols in terms of you know how you can under what conditions you can do the experiment some experiments where you should do them at all have been pretty good so far.

Shermer and Cobb discuss: objections to genetic engineering (political, religious, cultural) • selective breeding • recombinant DNA • the ethics of genetics • patenting life • gene therapy • gene editing • CRISPR • literature and films on the dangers of genetic engineering • bioweapons • 3 Laws of Behavior Genetics and what people fear about it.

Matthew Cobb is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. He is the author of six books: The Idea of the Brain: A History; Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code; Generation; The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis; Eleven Days in August: The Liberation of Paris in 1944; and Smell: A Very Short Introduction. He lives in England.