{"id":634,"date":"2009-11-08T05:26:41","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T05:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/?p=634"},"modified":"2009-11-08T05:26:41","modified_gmt":"2009-11-08T05:26:41","slug":"slate-reply-to-specter-up%e2%80%93we-need-a-national-dialogue-on-synthetic-biology-the-intersection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/slate-reply-to-specter-up%e2%80%93we-need-a-national-dialogue-on-synthetic-biology-the-intersection.php","title":{"rendered":"Slate Reply to Specter Up\u2013We Need a National Dialogue on Synthetic Biology | The Intersection"},"content":{"rendered":"

My latest contribution to the Slate <\/em>book club on Denialism <\/em>is here<\/a>. Most of the discussion concerns how to prompt a broader national debate on the subject of synthetic biology, a branch of science with revolutionary possibility that most Americans have never even heard o<\/a>f. Alas, I’m not optimistic this will change any time soon:<\/p>

In today’s media world, you really need a national leader to broach such a conversation—e.g., President Obama, as you suggest in your book. While I’d be happy to be proven wrong, though, I doubt he has the time to bring up such a dark-horse topic, especially in light of all the other policy fires that must be put out. Without a presidential initiative, we lack an adequate national forum for discussing the complex and crucial problems that science lays before us. (Don’t expect synthetic biology to come up on Oprah<\/em>; as you point out, she is too busy providing a platform<\/a> for vaccine skeptics like Jenny McCarthy.)<\/p>

As a result, synthetic biology may be fully upon us before people start thinking about it. And it will likely come to broader attention only as a result of some kind of political controversy—just as occurred with embryonic stem cell research or genetically modified foods. At that point, I fear, we’ll simply become polarized over the issue.<\/p>

You can read my full reply here<\/a>.<\/p>

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My latest contribution to the Slate book club on Denialism is here. Most of the discussion concerns how to prompt a broader national debate on the subject of synthetic biology, a branch of science with revolutionary possibility that most Americans … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}