Synthetic Biology's Wax Wings
The 2024 Supreme Court decision in Loper Light Enterprises v. Raimondo has weakened EPA regulatory authority, creating ambiguity for how synthetic biology innovations will be governed going forward. Ah, the old “We’ll figure it out later” approach to oversight. What could possibly go wrong?
Recent Nature publications highlight concerns that synthetic biology tools—particularly CRISPR and AI-driven protein design—can be misused for creating pathogens or bioweapons. Turns out, teaching machines to design pathogens might actually be a terrible idea. Who knew?