How Does Biotechnology Help the World

Innovations in biotechnology are boosting the debate, from questions about altering life to creating it from scratch.

FREMONT, CA: Biotechnology is applied to biology, molecular biology, genetics, and several other subfields of biology. Biotechnology uses cellular and biomolecular operations to create technologies and products that assist enhance lives and nature. Recent biotechnology creates breakthrough products and technologies to battle diseases, mitigate environmental harm, feed the hungry, use less and cleaner energy, and have safer and more efficient industrial manufacturing operations. Many of the advantages of biotechnology are concrete. At the same time, several risks remain hypotheticals, but it is better to be proactive of the risks than to wait for something to go wrong and then attempt to address the damage. Read to learn more.

The rapid progress of research has raised questions about the consequences of biotechnology innovations. Biotechnology carries more risk than scientific fields: 

microbes are tiny and complex to identify, but the dangers are potentially massive.Biotechnology could most likely prove dangerous either through the unintended impact of benevolent research or from the purposeful manipulation of biology to cause damage.One could also imagine controversies in which one group engages in biotechnology that is considered harmful or unethical.

While modern biotechnology offerings to society’s issues seem much more sophisticated than airdropping amphibians, this story should serve as a cautionary story. To avoid blundering into disaster, the mistakes of the past should be acknowledged. Scientists who work on gene drives have run risk evaluations and armed them with safeguards to make the trials safe. Additionally, there is a possibility that the gene drive could mutate once released, spreading genes that researchers never planned for. While attacks using conventional weapons may need much less expertise, the dangers of bioweapons should not be avoided. It might seem impossible to create bioweapons without expensive materials and scientific knowledge. Still, the latest innovations in biotechnology may make it even seamless for bioweapons to be produced outside of a specialized research lab.