

A Synthetic Biology Conference Lures an Intriguing Audience - vex
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/science/a-synthetic-biology-conference-lures-an-intriguing-audience.html

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technotony
Not much news here, a sensational headline is all. The FBI has been going to
conferences like this and working with the DIY Bio community for ages. Some
day some terrorist will have the capability to make entirely new viruses, but
that day is still away off and they'd have to do it without killing themselves
first. It's good that the FBI is paying attention, but honestly there are many
natural viruses which nature has made already that would be more useful to a
terrorist than using synthetic biology, and luckily we've been quite good
historically at containing these kinds of risks (as long as you don't believe
Hollywood).

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kiba
Synthetic biology tend to go for things that's not optimized for spreading
around in people and killing them. They'll be used to produce products and
goods for human consumption, which preclude genes spent on being viral and
deadly.

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Ultimatt
I think you're missing the point. Once its a lot more trivial to synthesize a
cell from data its not just blue skies scientists involved anymore. When
anyone can do whatever they like you will get misuse of the technology.

