Are Manmade Viruses the Next Big Terrorist Threat?

October 25, 2019

(Newsweek) – A devastating string of mass shootings has left the country reeling this year. But an even greater threat may be looming in the near future, one with the potential to cause far more widespread injury and loss of life: synthetically modified diseases designed to infect human beings on a global scale. That’s the danger that best-selling author and futurist Rob Reid predicts could arise from the field of synthetic biology, which combines biology and engineering to create artificial biological systems, from genetically-modified crops to custom viruses.