It’s an old story. A crazed scientist with delusions of grandeur embarks on ethically questionable research and creates a monstrosity. Of course that’s pure science fiction. I mean, no scientist could get research grants for that much money. No, you need the kind of money only a government has, to bring together teams of scientists, to work together, to create ethically questionable monstrosities. And for that, China has the rest of the world beat.
Did you know, and I kid you not, basketball star Yao Ming is the result of a selective breeding program set up under Mao Zedong over 50 years ago? But why leave it to clumsy methods like natural breeding, when we stand on the cusp of a paradigm shift for humanity: genetic engineering.
This has huge implications. But while much of the world is has barely begun to think about it, China has been spending big on research and development. At a major economic meeting earlier this year, the Chinese Communist Party announced a 5-year plan that would allocate 41 billion dollars to science, including genetic engineering research.
China’s R&D has paid off already. In 2012, a team of Chinese scientists were able to create brain cells from urine. Adds a new twist to that scene in Water World.
In the near future, genetic engineering will have a huge impact on humankind. And I know, it’s tempting to say, hey that’s great. But the problem is, what’s the future of this technology in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, an authoritarian regime that kills its own citizens for their organs, controls the media, and silences dissent?
I sat down with biotechnology policy expert Jamie Metzl to find out.
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