Cambridge, MA will of course be ground zero for The Great Biotech Disaster of the 21st century.
There are large biotech firms and small startups popping up all over the place. No regulation. The government doesn't know how to regulate this new technology; no one knows what can go wrong. And not everyone truly appreciates the powerful forces they are playing with.
Compare this to the nuclear industry now.
Just for fun, we imagine a believable (to me) worst case scenario: a contagious vector, perhaps a prion for novelty's sake, is accidentally created and released, and it causes cancer in all those exposed to it. Its incubation time is years, but you can spread it the entire time. By the time it is even noticed, a huge swath of the population has been infected, doomed. (Somewhat inspired by cervical and oral cancer and its spread by a virus.)
No comments :
Post a Comment