governance

Articles

• Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAGeneticsThe 1975 meeting at which molecular biologists lifted their own moratorium on recombinant DNA work by agreeing a system of physical and biological containment.historicalHistorical
• Differential technological developmentSocietyNick Bostrom's proposal to influence the order in which technologies arrive, hastening protective ones and delaying dangerous ones, rather than trying to halt progress.presentContested
• Dual-use research of concernSocietyLife-science research that produces knowledge or tools with legitimate purposes but foreseeable potential for catastrophic misuse, and the oversight regimes built around it.presentEstablished
• Engineered pandemicsSocietyOutbreaks caused by a pathogen deliberately modified, synthesised, or released rather than one that emerged from nature, and the biosecurity programme built around preventing them.presentSpeculative
• Existential riskSocietyThe category of risks that would end humanity or permanently destroy its potential, and the research programme built around identifying and reducing them.indefiniteContested
• Gene drivesGeneticsGenetic elements engineered to bias their own inheritance above the Mendelian half, allowing an introduced trait to spread through a wild population.TRL 52030sExperimental
• Governance of human genome editingSocietyThe patchwork of national law, professional norms, funding rules, and international soft law that determines what may be done to a human genome and by whom.presentEmerging
• Grey gooNanomedicineThe scenario in which self-replicating nanomachines consume the biosphere, an idea introduced by Eric Drexler in 1986 and later disowned by him.indefiniteSpeculative
• He Jiankui affairGeneticsThe 2018 announcement that twin girls had been born from CRISPR-edited embryos in Shenzhen, and the scientific condemnation and criminal prosecution that followed.historicalHistorical
• Human germline editingGeneticsModification of human embryos, eggs, or sperm so that the genetic change is inherited by the resulting child and by all of their descendants.TRL 42040sContested
• Jennifer DoudnaPeopleAmerican biochemist who co-authored the 2012 paper showing CRISPR-Cas9 could be programmed to cut chosen DNA sequences, and shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.presentEstablished
• Mirror lifeGeneticsHypothetical organisms built from mirror-image biological molecules, which a large group of scientists argued in 2024 could evade immunity and predation and should not be created.2050s+Speculative
• NeurorightsSocietyA proposed set of human rights covering mental privacy, cognitive liberty, and mental integrity, drafted in response to brain-recording and brain-stimulation technology.presentEmerging
• Precautionary principleSocietyThe regulatory doctrine that scientific uncertainty about a serious or irreversible harm is not by itself a reason to permit the activity that might cause it.presentContested