Can We Keep CRISPR Responsible? - with Jennifer Kuzma

02/19/23 • 50 min

Designer babies, agricultural mishaps, extinction via gene-drive. Now CRISPR has placed into our hands the awesome power to "edit life" in all its forms, how to keep the good while preventing the bad? How to safeguard our future? Is this even possible?
Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote speaker, where we interview scientists and explore pathways to a better future. In this episode, I ask Jennifer Kuzma, global expert on biotech responsibility, to shed light on one of the most important governance challenges of our time: how to put guardrails around CRISPR.
Jennifer is Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences and co-founder of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at NC State University, and contributes frequent public commentary in the New York Times, Wired magazine and countless other magazines and journals. She cares, and she’s working hard to create a better future!
It’s such an important topic and our conversation covered a lot of ground, so I’ve put compiled a fulsome post on the website with links to the examples and case-studies we discussed, and tons of further reading to explore. You’ll also find the full interview transcript there.
Learn more about my work as a futurist speaker.
See you in the future!

Previous Episode

What Comes After Lithium-Ion? - with George Crabtree

What comes after Lithium-ion? It’s only one of the most important technology questions in the world! Everything in the future of electronics, road vehicles, renewables, the electricity grid and even commercial aviation hinges on the answer. So I went looking for a true expert, a realist, a deep thinker and someone working at the absolute global cutting-edge of energy storage science and engineering. And I found Dr George Crabtree!
Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote speaker. In this episode, we're examining the future of batteries with George Crabtree, a deep thinker at the absolute global cutting-edge of energy storage science and engineering. George is Director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) at Argonne National Laboratory.
There are lots of highlights to this conversation. As well as batteries, we touched on superconductivity, minerals supply, long-haul trucks, aviation, ultracapacitors, the hydrogen economy and more. But the one I like best is George's confidence. Argonne and the JCESR scientists are aiming BIG. And while there are formidable challenges, it looks like those step-change improvements to Lithium-ion batteries and large-scale grid batteries are only a matter of time!
For additional comments, and to read the interview transcript, check out the FutureBites post on the website.
Learn more about my work as a futurist speaker.
See you in the future!

Next Episode

How Far Can We Go With Solar? - with Martin Green

Has Martin Green done more than any other human to safeguard our future? For fifty years – yes fifty – he’s dedicated his life to pushing the boundaries of photovoltaics so they convert more sunlight to electricity and produce more electricity for less money. He and his team have held the world record for solar cell efficiencies for 30 of the past 39 years, and his technology is now imbedded in – wait for it – no less than 91 percent of worldwide solar cell production.
And he isn’t stopping!

So, how much more room for improvement is there? What happens if we can halve the price of solar again? Big questions for our future!

Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, global futurist and keynote speaker, where we interview scientists and explore pathways to a better future. In this episode, I ask Professor Martin Green at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who I’m now calling the God of Solar, “How far can we go?” and we spend a happy hour exploring the myriad ways we can extend the solar contribution to our future.
Enjoy the podcast!

And for further commentary and a full transcript of our conversation, see the accompanying FutureBites post on my website.

Learn more about my work as a futurist speaker.

See you in the future!