If We Create Life, Who Will Control It?

September 18, 2014

(NPR) – The difference between the gothic speculations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and today’s reality is twofold: First, we are beginning to build these creatures — fiction is now real; second, money plays a huge role in it. There is great financial gain in genetic engineering, an industry that Stanford bioengineering professor Drew Endy estimates equals 2 percent of the U.S. economy now, and is growing at a rate of 12 percent a year. The problem, as Lewontin reminds us, is that we often can’t rely on those who pursue invention for profit or for military interests to have the best interests of the public in mind. So, as we create new life forms for all different purposes, who will control them?