Engineering the Perfect Baby

• If anyone had devised a way to create a genetically engineered baby, I figured George Church would know about it.

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• At his labyrinthine laboratory on the Harvard Medical School campus, you can find researchers giving E. Coli a novel genetic code never seen in nature. Around another bend, others are carrying out a plan to use DNA engineering to resurrect the woolly mammoth. His lab, Church likes to say, is the center of a new technological genesis—one in which man rebuilds creation to suit himself.

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• When I visited the lab last June, Church proposed that I speak to a young postdoctoral scientist named Luhan Yang, a Harvard recruit from Beijing who’d been a key player in developing a new, powerful technology for editing DNA, called CRISPR-Cas9. With Church, Yang had founded a small company to engineer the genomes of pigs and cattle, sliding in beneficial genes and editing away bad ones.

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• As I listened to Yang, I waited for a chance to ask my real questions: Can any of this be done to human beings? Can we improve the human gene pool? The position of much of mainstream science has been that such meddling would be unsafe, irresponsible, and even impossible. But Yang didn’t hesitate. Yes, of course, she said. In fact, the Harvard laboratory had a project to determine how it could be achieved. She flipped open her laptop to a PowerPoint slide titled “Germline Editing Meeting.”

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• Here it was: a technical proposal to alter human heredity.

• “Germ line” is biologists’ jargon for the egg and sperm, which combine to form an embryo. By editing the DNA of these cells or the embryo itself, it could be possible to correct disease genes and to pass those genetic fixes on to future generations. Such a technology could be used to rid families of scourges like cystic fibrosis. It might also be possible to install genes that offer lifelong protection against infection, Alzheimer’s, and, Yang told me, maybe the effects of aging. These would be history-making medical advances that could be as important to this century as vaccines were to the last.

• The fear is that germ-line engineering is a path toward a dystopia of superpeople and designer babies for those who can afford it.

HOW IS TECHNOLOGY AFFECTING BUSINESS?

• The best way to describe the unrelenting pace of technology growth is by using Gordon Moore’s words:

• “the number of transistors per cm2 doubles about every 18 months”.

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• What does it mean? It means that the processing power is hastily increasing, technology gets obsolete quicker than before, customers’ expectations towards it become higher and higher and – potentially – technological deployment will have no end.

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• From a businessman’s point of view, this fact has consequences: it is impossible for managers – but also for front-line employees – to know anything about technology, since it is a daily reality for everyone.

• Moreover, technological firms tend to converge and inglobate other industries, not necessarily related to technology. In a hypotetical future, we could have an enormous firm controlling almost everything, from the Internet to energy, gas and whatever. Just think about Google, the most famous computer software and web search engine company has been acquiring, on average, more than one company per week since 2010 – if you want to have a look at Google’s acquisitions, just 

I AM HOLDING MY HORSES

WOW I JUST CAN'T COME UP

I Fail to see how 350 of US

Funny Picture

My Dear I Want To Swimming 

Lee Kuan Yew: Singaporeans urged not to join queues

• Singapore's authorities have advised people to stop joining the queues to view founding father and statesman Lee Kuan Yew as he lies in state.

• Some 250,000 people have already visited to pay respects to Mr Lee, who died on Monday aged 91.

• A state funeral will be held on Sunday, with foreign dignitaries from around the world expected to attend.

• India has declared it a national day of mourning, with flags flown at half-mast and no official entertainment.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be attending the funeral.

• Public viewing of Mr Lee's body, which has been open day and all night since Wednesday, will end on Saturday night.

• Singaporean officials were caught off-guard by the overwhelming crowds that showed up, with the queue snaking through the city centre.

• They warned that by Friday afternoon the queuing time to enter Parliament House was nine hours.

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• Authorities said in a statement that members of the public were "strongly advised" not to join the queue now, and redirected them to smaller tribute sites set up around the island.

• The line has since been moved to the Padang, a large field used in central Singapore for parades and cricket matches, where tents and crowd control barricades have been set up.

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Thanks BBC