Hank Greely commets on how the spread of home-brew technology has contributed to advancements in genetic manipulation for Scientific American.

Whenever journalists, futurists and ethicists come up with Top Ten lists of ways the human race will bring about its own demise, an entry for “synthetic biology” inevitably edges up in the rankings. Pundits love to cite the example of how this technology might let smallpox be turned into an unstoppable weapon by marshaling the capabilities of this emerging technology.

So far, this type of doomsday scenario has come nowhere close. In fact, borrowing an enzyme from one organism and repurposing it for a new use in another—as if one were transferring a part between two used cars—has so far only shown its benign side. Synthetic biology has already demonstrated new ways to make anti-malarial medicine, scents, flavors, industrial chemicals and such.

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Hank Greely, a bioethicst from Stanford, endorsed the commentary’s call to action, but added that a new technology to manipulate genes—CRISPR/Cas9—may make it relatively easy for a criminal syndicate to engineer an opiate-producing yeast strain. He also thinks that regulators may be slow to give their nod to the new technology. “It seems to me entirely possible that the only uses of this discovery will be illicit,” he says.