21-05-2010, 01:42 PM
There is a book on Craig Venter and the Human Genome Project that I can recommend (for non-experts).
"The Genome War" by James Shreeve, Amazon link here.
It covers some of the personalities and politics involved, and also some of the novel approaches used by Venter's company to sequence the human genome.
Once having developed the way from the Genome into data, the reverse becomes a goal nearly automatically. In my understanding this is basically what has been achieved now. Of course this opens the door for modifying the data or constructing data from scratch and then transforming that into a Genome.
The potential risks are enormous and the possibility of abuse is definitely there.
"The Genome War" by James Shreeve, Amazon link here.
It covers some of the personalities and politics involved, and also some of the novel approaches used by Venter's company to sequence the human genome.
Once having developed the way from the Genome into data, the reverse becomes a goal nearly automatically. In my understanding this is basically what has been achieved now. Of course this opens the door for modifying the data or constructing data from scratch and then transforming that into a Genome.
The potential risks are enormous and the possibility of abuse is definitely there.
The most relevant literature regarding what happened since September 11, 2001 is George Orwell's "1984".