Disadvantage

Synthetic biology poses new ethical dilemmas related to human life. As genome editing becomes more advanced, new questions arise for bioethicists. Synthetic biology pros and cons involve not just scientific issues, but also moral issues. For example, is it ethical to eliminate genetic disorders? Will genome editing deepen inequality as richer families can afford to […]

Synthetic biology has already been applied in the field of agriculture to produce plants that are more nutritious, more resistant to pests, or lower in fertilizer needs. For example, there is a synthetic biology wheat variant that resists a common fungus, resulting in a crop that yields more wheat while maintaining the same carbon footprint. […]

Some ethicists worry that synthetic biology makes it easy to design dangerous organisms that could be released maliciously. However, synthetic biology can also mitigate bioterrorism risks by allowing scientists to create a variant of a microorganism that is less dangerous, which could out-compete a dangerous virus or bacteria strain. Synthetic biology could also be used […]