The villain in “Inferno,” Brown’s sixth novel, follows a movement called transhumanism. Brown, 48, who spent more than two years in Florence researching the book, has been interested in the controversial concept of transhumanism for years. (Today)

“Imaging what the world might be like if we were really good at making things—better things—cleanly, inexpensively, and on a global scale.…The global prospect would be, not scarcity, but unprecedented abundance—radical, transformative, and sustainable abundance. We would be able to produce radically more of what people want and at a radically lower cost—in every sense of the word, both economic and environmental. (Nanowerk)

Genetic engineering provides the backdrop for the sci-fi thriller “Errors of the Human Body” (opening May 3 at Reading Gaslamp Stadium Theaters for late night screenings only on Friday and Saturday). (KPBS)

The Healing Cell, just out from Hachette Press, deals with promising stem cell therapies from the patient perspective– and that’s a good thing. (Forbes)

Tales from the Organ Trade is a fascinating film which takes a chilling look at the characters in the international black market in organs. (BioEdge)

The field of synthetic biology is hugely exciting but it’s provoked fears of bioterrorism and man-made plagues - so do the benefits really outweigh the risks? (Yahoo News, UK)

Is transhumanism—the possibility of enhancing human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities through biotechnology —a brave new world that we should welcome with open arms? (Forbes)

It has been 10 years since we carried out a systematic search of the literature on birth defect risk in infants born following assisted reproductive technology (ART) compared with non-ART infants. Because of changes to ART practice since that review and the publication of more studies the objective of this review was to include these more recent studies to estimate birth defect risk after ART and to examine birth defect risk separately in ART singletons and multiples. (Human Reproduction Update, Oxford Journals)

It is the “first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinking, according to the editors, and the anthology includes a roster of leaders in transhumanist thought. (Kurtzweil)

The past few years have seen rapid advancements in vector-mediated gene transfer to the nervous system and modest successes in human gene therapy trials. The purpose of this review is to describe commonly-used viral gene transfer vectors and recent advancements towards producing meaningful gene-based treatments for central nervous system (CNS) disorders. (Discovery Medicine)

Premiering today at the Sundance Film Festival as part of the U.S. documentary competition, “After Tiller” is an intimate and heartfelt look at the four doctors performing third-trimester abortions in the United States, doing so even after the 2009 assassination of such a physician, Dr. George Tiller. (L.A. Times)

Doug Wolens’s recent documentary takes on the complex, abstract concept of the singularity, which predicts a moment when technology will give rise to intelligence beyond the scope of human imagination. It sounds like sci-fi but, Wolens and others argue, there’s no denying the sweeping impact of technology on human existence and the implications are worth thinking about. (The Atlantic)

In the face of such uncertainty, what we need most is to understand better—issue by issue—what is happening on the ground in the country; and a terrific new book Governing Health in Contemporary China by my CFR colleague and renowned public health expert Huang Yanzhong provides precisely that kind of insight. It details Beijing’s efforts to tackle one critical and politically explosive issue—health care—and helps us understand where and why the country has succeeded and failed, and what more needs to be done. (Council on Foreign Relations)

Dr. Ricki Lewis knows a thing or two about genetics after decades in genetic counseling and multiple books and academic papers. Her latest book, a narrative nonfiction title The Forever Fix has been in her head since gene therapy began in 1990, and she began writing about it – first in magazines, then in her textbooks for McGraw-Hill Higher Education. (Psychology Today)

Time magazine recently featured Kurzweil on it cover, and Fortune described him as “a legendary inventor with a history of mind-blowing ideas.” And now he has a new book, with a subtitle that suggests he has found another such idea: “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.” (New Yorker)

Nanotechnology is helping to revolutionise many technology and industry sectors, such as environmental science, energy, medicine, food safety and transportation. For teaching and research I often have to recommend a text that introduces risk assessment to graduate students who are familiar with the environmental fate and transport of nanoparticles and nanotoxicology in natural and engineered environmental systems. I find this book an ideal starting point for those not familiar with risk assessments.

Biotechnology and nanotechnology risk assessment: minding and managing the potential threats around us, Steven Ripp and Theodore Henry (eds) (Chemistry World)

A dystopian society supported by genetically modified clone workers stands out among the six stories that make up the sprawling film “Cloud Atlas.” The idea may seem far-fetched because of political opposition to human cloning and genetic modification in today’s world, but the science is closer than many people may think. (Live Science)

Those issues are at the heart of Cohen’s new book, “Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics.” The focus of his year as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the book examines three categories of medical tourism: services that are legal in the home and destination countries (e.g., hip replacement, cardiac bypass); services that are illegal in the home country but legal in the destination country (e.g., abortion, assisted suicide, reproductive technologies, stem cell treatment); and services that are illegal in both places (e.g., organ sale). (Harvard Gazette)

In “Regenesis,” a book exploring the science of synthetic biology, George Church and Ed Regis imagine a world where micro-organisms are capable of producing clean petroleum or detecting arsenic in drinking water, where people sport genetic modifications that render their bodies impervious to the flu, or where a synthetic organism can be programmed to invade and destroy cancer cells. (Wall Street Journal)

In the future, genetically modified organisms could be making our medicines, our fuel, our housewares, our houses — and they could even help us remake ourselves. All that may sound like science-fiction, but the future is already arriving, in the form of the bioplastic bottle you may be holding in your hand. Harvard geneticist George Church lays it all out in a new book, “Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves,” written with Ed Regis [Interview with George Church]. (NBC News)

Artificial wombs, lifelong fertility - it seems the stuff of dystopian sci-fi, but an author says it will happen. (Salon)