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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George

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Speaker 1: Nori back with Amy Webb. We're talking about her work

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Speaker 1: the Genesis Machine. Amy. Right before the break, we were

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Speaker 1: talking about synthetic biology ridding the planet of disease. Not

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Speaker 1: quite going to happen, is it? No? No, it will

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Speaker 1: at some points start to eradicate disease for sure. In fact,

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Speaker 1: there are messenger RNA vaccines and again this is the

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Speaker 1: technology that is in the MODERNA and biointech vaccines. There's

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Speaker 1: messenger RNA vaccines in progress now for the flu from malaria,

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Speaker 1: and for many years they were being studied messenger rna

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Speaker 1: as a treatment for cancer. So I think, I think

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Speaker 1: we are definitely going to see new therapeutics and new

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Speaker 1: treatments that give us better options to deal with. You know,

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Speaker 1: some of the pathogens that exist and that we know of.

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Speaker 1: There's also a whole bunch of viruses and a whole

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Speaker 1: bunch of pathogens that, thank goodness, we haven't even come

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Speaker 1: into contact with. Another really interesting application of this is aging.

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Speaker 1: Synthetic biology is probably going to make aging kind of

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Speaker 1: a treatable problem. There are some researchers who are working

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Speaker 1: on pretty interesting therapies that are related to cellular decay,

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Speaker 1: and what they're trying to do is reverse obesity, tackle

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Speaker 1: diabetes while also improving your kidney function, your heart function,

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Speaker 1: and so far the technique that they're using is already

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Speaker 1: working in mice. What will synthetic biology do for organ replacements?

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Speaker 1: Would they will they create different organs? So yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is another really interesting area. There's something called a body

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Speaker 1: on a chip. So imagine, if you will, a translucent,

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Speaker 1: almost like piece of plastic, something the size of a

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Speaker 1: stick of an old could come and you know, researchers

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Speaker 1: are able to create what are called organoids. These are tiny,

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Speaker 1: sometimes microscopic, blobs of tissue that function the same as

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Speaker 1: the tissue that's inside of your body. So they can

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Speaker 1: make like tiny circulatory systems or tiny reproductive systems, or

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Speaker 1: tiny respiratory systems, tiny lung cells, hurt cells, and vascular

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Speaker 1: cells to connect them. And what this does is give

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Speaker 1: us the ability to test toxins or therapeutics in a

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Speaker 1: really safe way to see how it impacts our body

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Speaker 1: without having to do those trials on animals or people,

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Speaker 1: So that's that's like a tiny organ. But even in

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Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks, there have been some terrific

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Speaker 1: successes in growing, for example, hearts and inside of pigs.

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Speaker 1: Human organs are remarkably similar to the organs that grow

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Speaker 1: inside of pigs, and again this gives us some more

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Speaker 1: options than we would have had previously. Amy what is

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Speaker 1: fueling this science, what's pushing it? Well, I think a

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Speaker 1: couple of things. This is a relatively new area of science,

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Speaker 1: but it's been in progress now for a couple of decades.

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Speaker 1: The human genome was just the first draft of it

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Speaker 1: was finished in the early two thousands, and it was

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Speaker 1: announced that it's mostly complete as of last year. So

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Speaker 1: we've really come a long way in the past two decades.

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Speaker 1: And now that we kind of have the source code

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Speaker 1: to human life, it's giving us the ability to start

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Speaker 1: to do something with it. So I think that's that's

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Speaker 1: part of what's fueling all of the interest. Obviously, this

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Speaker 1: pandemic has shifted where investors are putting their money and

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Speaker 1: where some of the scientific community is doing its research.

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Speaker 1: So I think you got this blood of capital, you've

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Speaker 1: got heightened awareness of what this technology can do, and

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Speaker 1: we have real existential threats on the horizon. We've got

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Speaker 1: climate change we have to deal with, and extreme weather events.

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Speaker 1: We're going to have to figure out where to get

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Speaker 1: our food. Um, So a lot of what's being researched

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Speaker 1: now is to help make us more resilient as we

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Speaker 1: continue to live on the planet. Instead of eating that steak,

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Speaker 1: we'll be eating some kind of synthetic cardboard for something.

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Speaker 1: All Right, So listen, you and I. You grew up.

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Speaker 1: You're from Detroit, right, Okay, So I'm from the I'm

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Speaker 1: from outside of Chicago, um and my family. Part of

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Speaker 1: my family was in Niles. So I think you and

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Speaker 1: I are sort of grew up in a similar region

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Speaker 1: where if I went home and told people, hey, we

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Speaker 1: should we should get our steaks out of a lab

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Speaker 1: versus from a farm, I think not gonna have they

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Speaker 1: gag themselves totally, right, Okay, especially or dairy here. This

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Speaker 1: is the and better to be fair. On the other

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Speaker 1: side of the lake in Wisconsin, they care a little

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Speaker 1: bit more. I think about cheese. But we just had

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Speaker 1: the Super Bowl and Americans ate I think something around

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Speaker 1: one point four billion chicken wings. That is incredibly resource

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Speaker 1: intensive to grow that many chickens to get them, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and like get them ready, and you know it's not

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Speaker 1: necessarily the greatest thing for a chicken, the most humane,

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Speaker 1: but but everybody wants the wings. Well what if instead

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Speaker 1: of using all the resources it takes to grow live chickens,

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Speaker 1: instead we started with a stem cell from a chicken

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Speaker 1: and we created meat in a bioreactor, which I know,

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Speaker 1: again sounds like there's no way, you're right, My relatives

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Speaker 1: are going to be like, you want me to do what?

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Speaker 1: But but it uses the same amino acids to nourish

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Speaker 1: those cells as they grow. There's no home hormones, no antibiotics,

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Speaker 1: and within a couple of weeks you get tissue that

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Speaker 1: tastes just like a chicken wing that you would have

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Speaker 1: gotten from a chicken that clucked, has the same texture,

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Speaker 1: maybe the same consistency, but was created just in a

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Speaker 1: different way. I think that that is a terrific option.

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Speaker 1: It's potentially healthier meat, it's potentially better meat. I mean,

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Speaker 1: let's face it, commercial chickens don't taste that great because

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Speaker 1: they're they're grown rapidly, and at some point we'll be

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Speaker 1: able to scale this and make it much cheaper. And

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Speaker 1: at that point, if you can get cheaper meat local

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Speaker 1: to where you grew up, there's no hormones, there's no antibiotics,

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Speaker 1: that I think that becomes a pretty viable option. Who

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Speaker 1: do we not create a chicken with twenty wings instead

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Speaker 1: of two? That is an awesome question. I think we

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Speaker 1: probably could do that, except that I think that that

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Speaker 1: would be probably more challenging than just growing the cellular

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Speaker 1: based to meet that we could grow in a bioreactor.

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Speaker 1: But I totally get the listen, believe me, I get

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Speaker 1: the skepticism. They've made billions of dollars on the COVID vaccines,

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Speaker 1: big pharma has Would they support this kind of movement

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Speaker 1: of the synthetic biology or would they be put out

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Speaker 1: of business? You know, that's a great question. I think

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Speaker 1: there are this ecosystem on the business side is just

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Speaker 1: starting to develop. So some of the funders and some

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Speaker 1: of the companies that are interested in this research are

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Speaker 1: those those big companies in part because they've they've got

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Speaker 1: the money to do the research. I mean, one of

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Speaker 1: the problems that we have in the United States is

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Speaker 1: that our government has not been funding basic research, basic

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Speaker 1: research and science and technology for decades, and we're pretty

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Speaker 1: far behind other big economies around the world and our

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Speaker 1: approach to funding and definitely our approach long term planning,

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Speaker 1: so that doesn't give us a lot of options. The

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Speaker 1: money's got to come from somewhere if we want to

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Speaker 1: stay competitive and if we want to benefit from you know,

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Speaker 1: what's on the horizon. I think that it's possible that

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Speaker 1: that the you know, if there's a lot of success,

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Speaker 1: especially in therapeutics, that starts to erode and possibly even

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Speaker 1: break the business models of some of these companies m

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Speaker 1: but I also know that they weren't a long term horizon,

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Speaker 1: so there's there's time to plan and figure things out.

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Speaker 1: Are there companies that specialize in synthetic biology, Amy, there

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Speaker 1: sure are, um and I think it's important to note

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Speaker 1: that there's the products like the synthetic chicken wings, for example,

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Speaker 1: and then there's the process, which is the infrastructure, the tools,

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Speaker 1: basically all the things that you need in order to

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Speaker 1: to make the ecosystem work. So just as a quick example,

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Speaker 1: there's a company in China called BGI and they are

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Speaker 1: one of the largest companies in the world for genome sequencing.

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Speaker 1: So this is basically figuring out what the code is

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Speaker 1: for a particular genome. Now, in the year twenty o six,

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Speaker 1: to get a high quality draft of a human genome,

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Speaker 1: it costs fourteen million dollars, and a finished really good

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Speaker 1: sequence might cost between twenty and twenty five million dollars.

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Speaker 1: Just a couple of years ago, the cost for a

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Speaker 1: finished sequence dropped down to just four thousand dollars, and

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Speaker 1: today BGI can sequence a genome for one hundred bucks,

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Speaker 1: which is basically left than the price of a pair

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Speaker 1: of Nike Air Jordans. So there are companies that do sequencing.

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Speaker 1: There are companies that do what's called synthesis, which is

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Speaker 1: taking all that genetic code and putting it together. There

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Speaker 1: are companies in the United States that are phenomenal Twist

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Speaker 1: Bioscience and Ginko Bioworks. And then there's the companies that

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Speaker 1: are making products. So eat just is a company that

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Speaker 1: is making synthetic meat. There are companies that are making

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Speaker 1: synthetic This is kind of crazy synthetic cheese. So it's

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Speaker 1: still got the same code as any other cheese, but

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Speaker 1: it has no it was not it didn't require cow

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Speaker 1: to make it, which again is you know, kind of crazy.

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Speaker 1: If you think about it. What's the downside to some

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Speaker 1: of the same, what's the dark part of it? So listen,

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Speaker 1: I know I'm painting kind of a rosy picture here,

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Speaker 1: and I believe that there is a rosy picture to

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Speaker 1: be had, but there are significant risks. In the book,

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Speaker 1: we identify nine risks, and I can highlight a few here.

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Speaker 1: First of all, there's something called gain of function research.

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Speaker 1: So this is where scientists intentionally mutate viruses or they

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Speaker 1: try to make something as bad as it can be,

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Speaker 1: and they do this within the confines of a lab,

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Speaker 1: and it's supposed to be in a controlled environment. And

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Speaker 1: that's I think for the purpose of planning, or at

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Speaker 1: least that's what we've been told. And I don't see

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Speaker 1: that there's a big there's a reason to do that

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Speaker 1: in the year twenty twenty two, when we've got predictive

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Speaker 1: analytic systems in AI that can help us run simulations.

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Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, there was a researcher in Rotterdam that

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Speaker 1: announced that he had augmented the H five N one

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Speaker 1: bird flu virus so that it could be transmitted from

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Speaker 1: birds to humans and then between people as a new

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Speaker 1: deadly strain of the flu a pre covid. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of hard to remember this, but pre covid H five

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Speaker 1: N one was actually the worst virus to hit our

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Speaker 1: planet since the Spanish flu that had a super high

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Speaker 1: mortality rate. So this scientist in Rotterdam literally he told

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Speaker 1: his fellow researchers that he'd mutated the hell his words

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Speaker 1: out of H five N one to see what it

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Speaker 1: could do in the name of predicting mutations and developing cures.

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Speaker 1: But that's really stupid. We we don't need to do

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Speaker 1: that type of work it and it really should not

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Speaker 1: be done. UM. So that's a big risk, and synthetic

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Speaker 1: biology enables that. It turns out DNA is a security

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Speaker 1: risk UM in the future, you know, are some of

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Speaker 1: the worst security breaches could actually involve DNA. UM. You

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Speaker 1: can scrape somebody's genetic code, sequence it and then you know,

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Speaker 1: create a targeted virus for one person UM and a

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Speaker 1: virus doesn't have to be deadly to be debilitating, right,

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Speaker 1: you could create you could you could create a virus

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Speaker 1: that might give a ceo chronic diarrhea or or something

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Speaker 1: exactly right, and and that could that would obviously be

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Speaker 1: horrible for the CEO. But this could potentially you really

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Speaker 1: destroy the financial markets temporarily, things like that, not to

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Speaker 1: mention the company. Well, I'm convinced COVID nineteen was made

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Speaker 1: in that Wuhan lab. I mean, that is something that

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Speaker 1: a lot of people have been wondering, and I will

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Speaker 1: tell you this. I said that in December of twenty nineteen.

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Speaker 1: By the way, Yeah, I think you were a little

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Speaker 1: you know, you're probably early in thinking that through. I

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Speaker 1: completely understand where that sentiment comes from. And I think unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: we're probably never going to know if it was the

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Speaker 1: result of research or gain a function research or something

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Speaker 1: that appeared naturally. And that's because, as we all know,

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Speaker 1: the government of China locked out the outside world and

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Speaker 1: just will I wonder why. Yeah, so at this point, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think at this point, like again, there's

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Speaker 1: there's just no reason to be doing gain a function research.

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Speaker 1: But it doesn't it shouldn't stop us from investing in

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Speaker 1: and researching synthetic biology, which is going to provide us

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Speaker 1: you know, but we got to do this with guardrails.

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Speaker 1: And that one other I think quick important risk, and

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Speaker 1: that's that we have different regulatory structures. So in the US,

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Speaker 1: there's been kind of a back and forth, depending on

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Speaker 1: who was in office at the time of what to

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Speaker 1: fund and whether or not to use stem cells and

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Speaker 1: things like that. And you know, it's really unfortunate, but

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Speaker 1: in the US, science and politics are unfortunately intertwined, and

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Speaker 1: that has really put us behind other company countries, notably China,

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Speaker 1: which has a very different approach to regulation. Biology doesn't

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Speaker 1: doesn't care about regulations. You know, biology tends to self sustain.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to have to come up with guardrails,

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Speaker 1: restrictions and rules that we can enforce and that are

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Speaker 1: consistent all around the world. And I think we're we're

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Speaker 1: not quite there yet, and that is a risk somebody's

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Speaker 1: going to abuse this. Oh absolutely, there's no question. I

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Speaker 1: think what does not keep me up at night, UM,

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Speaker 1: in times when I'm not up for the show the

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Speaker 1: you know what doesn't keep me up at night is

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Speaker 1: that at the moment, this is not really a do

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Speaker 1: it yourself UM technology. You need to have quite a

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Speaker 1: bit of knowledge. So I think it's this is not

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Speaker 1: the kind of thing where a teenager can inject malware

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Speaker 1: into you know, the code for life. But that's today.

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Speaker 1: Things may be different in a couple of years. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: we absolutely need to start really thinking through how to

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Speaker 1: how to protect ourselves. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more