The following is excerpted from the recently published “The Future, Six Drivers of Global Change” by Al Gore. It is an example of the broad breadth of subjects covered by this extraordinary collaborative effort by the world’s formost scholars representing many different disciplines:
“…a method for producing spider silk has been developed by genetic engineers who insert genes from orb-making spiders into goats which then secrete the spider silk – along with milk – from their udders. Spider silk is incredibly useful because it is both elastic and five times stronger than steel by weight. The spiders themselves cannot be farmed because of their antisocial, cannibalistic nature. But the insertion of their silk-producing genes in the goats allows not only a larger volume of spider silk to be produced, but also allows the farming of the goats.
“In any case, there is no doubt that the widespread use of synthetic biology – and particularly the use of self-replicating artificial life-forms – could potentially generate radical changes in the world, including some potential changes that arguably should be carefully monitored. There are, after all, too many examples of plants and animals purposely introduced into a new, native environment that then quickly spread out of control and disrupted the ecosystem into which they were introduced.
“Kudzu, a Japanese plant that was introduced into my native Southern United States as a means of combating soil erosion, spread wildly and became a threat to native trees and plants. It became known as‘the vine that ate the South’. Do we have to worry about ‘microbial kudzu’ if a synthetic life-form capable of self-replication is introduced into the biosphere for specific useful purposes, but the spreads rapidly in ways that have not been predicted or even contemplated?”
