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A breathtaking scientific revolution is taking
place – biotechnology has been progressing
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at stunning speed, giving us the tools to
eventually gain control over biology.
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On the one hand solving the deadliest diseases
while also creating viruses more dangerous
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than nuclear bombs, able to devastate humanity.
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What is going on?
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Biotechnology is increasingly everywhere.
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The cotton in your clothes, the vegetables
you eat, your dog.
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Humans manipulate living things.
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We use bacteria to produce insulin, connect
prosthetics directly with our brains and make
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industrial enzymes to produce paper.
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Gene therapy creates cures to previously untreatable
diseases while we are working on food crops
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resistant to climate change.
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Our mastery over biology has been speeding
up so much that within weeks of the first
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Covid 19 case, the unknown coronavirus was
broken down in laboratories and analysed.
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Scientists generated a copy of its genetic
material to create a vaccine that was ready
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for testing months after the pandemic began.
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Something unthinkable a decade ago.
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Where is all this sudden progress coming from?
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Well, it's complicated.
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But in a nutshell: really expensive things
got cheap and knowledge of how to do
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impressive things spread freely.
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The Human Genome Project starting in 1990
was the first major attempt to read human
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DNA in its entirety. 13 years and $3 billion
later, it was complete.
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By then the cost of decoding a human genome
had fallen to about $100 million.
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Today it is 100,000 times cheaper, costing
only about $1000.
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How is that possible?
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Converting DNA into computer data and then
studying it used to be a super tedious process,
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taking expert humans around 3 years of manual
work.
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Today it takes about two weeks and is almost
completely automated.
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Biotechnology has gone from something restricted
to the best and well-funded laboratories staffed
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by the world's top experts, to something affordable
enough for hundreds of thousands of people
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to casually work on.
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What has sped up the process even more is
that information in the field is shared
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widely and freely.
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Cutting-edge discoveries now take just about
a year to be copied in laboratories around the world,
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a few years for anyone with a biology
background to work out, and a bit over a decade
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for high school students to experiment with
them in schools.
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Imagine that your local computer repair shop
could build a pristine Iphone 11 with just
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the parts lying around, and that teenagers
are asked to build a new Iphone 5 for homework.
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Not a crappy homemade version, the real thing.
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This is what is going on right now in biotechnology
– a true revolution.
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We are adding knowledge at unprecedented rates,
while things get ever faster and cheaper to do.
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This speed means we can expect even more wonderful
things for humanity.
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Lifesaving treatments, miracle crops and solutions
to problems we can’t even imagine right now.
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But unfortunately progress cuts both ways.
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What can be used for good, can also be used
for bad, by accident or on purpose.
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For all the good biotech will do for us, in
the near future it also could easily kill
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many millions of people, in the worst case
hundreds of millions.
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Worse than any nuclear bomb.
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The world just witnessed how fast the novel
coronavirus spread.
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We still do not know for sure if it came from
nature or was the result of an accidental leak
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from a lab working with corona viruses,
that’s still subject to scientific debate.
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In the end at least 7 million people died.
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And this was still a relatively mild virus
that didn’t cause serious disease in most of those infected.
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But that might change in the future.
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Wherever the last pandemic came from, the
next one might very well be our own fault
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– in a sense, many things going on in biotechnology
could lead to this.
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Most of all how easy it is to work with dangerous
viruses.
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Thousands of scientists can simply order the
genetic data of infectious virus samples online
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to experiment with them.
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Assembling these into an artificial virus
in 2023 costs about as much as a new car,
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including all the lab equipment.
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At the same time, other scientists are trying
to find viruses that hide in nature,
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like in wild bats or monkeys.
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There are probably plenty of potentially deadly
pandemics out there.
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Virus hunters take samples back to the lab
to learn whether the newly discovered viruses
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are likely to spread in humans and catalogue
the danger.
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When a biologist discovers a new virus, they
usually publish its genetic data to the public.
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Journals are eager to share descriptions of
potentially dangerous viruses.
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Other labs go further and make viruses more
dangerous.
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They combine and mutate different viruses
to understand which mutations make them more
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likely to spread between humans or make them
deadlier than their original forms.
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And again, these results are shared freely.
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All while synthetic DNA and equipment to rebuild
these viruses are sold online to anyone
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without any or very little tracking.
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As the tools of biotechnology get ever cheaper
and easy to use and the data on
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dangerous viruses keeps multiplying, it is only a matter
of time before a well-meaning scientist shares
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blueprints for the equivalent nuclear bomb
of viruses, a superbug that will cause millions of deaths
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– and someone uses it.
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Maybe because they have bad intentions, maybe
because they are irresponsible or sloppy.
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We are creating an environment in which it
is increasingly easy for anyone to create
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a weaponized virus in their backyard.
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This is scary.
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The world would be plunged into an unending
crisis as new pandemics pop up year after year
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or all at once – killing large parts
of the world’s population, doing unimaginable
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damage to civilisation as a whole, and possibly
undoing centuries of progress.
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It’s not the first time we’ve faced a
challenge like this and we are not helpless
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– think of nuclear technology.
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Something extremely powerful and dangerous
with huge upsides and downsides.
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Nuclear energy was born from weapon programs,
so its creators were always aware of the potential
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for their knowledge to be abused.
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From the very beginning it was clear that
knowledge in this field and access to the
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technology needed to be handled with utmost
care.
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So a lot of effort has gone into making sure
no radioactive material disappears from sight
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or that countries don’t try to hide weapons
development behind energy programs.
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The result hasn’t been perfect, but considering
the 411 nuclear power stations running today,
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we’ve been very successful.
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Likewise, no researcher would think to share
data on how to turn common laboratory equipment
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into bomb-making machines on the internet.
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There is no reason we could not handle the
really dangerous aspects of biotechnology
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in a similar way!
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Experts have come up with three sort of bullet
points:
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First we need to delay the next deadly pandemic
by getting a grip on how we treat dangerous viruses.
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Their genetic data should be treated as an
infohazard: information that poses a danger
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to society if it is shared without care.
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In other words, not just anyone should be
able to order dangerous DNA online.
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And if you do, you should be tracked, so it
becomes much harder for the wrong people
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to access the really spicy stuff.
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The next step is detecting the danger by becoming
aware which viruses are present among us
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and are spreading explosively between humans.
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This could be as easy as having labs in population
centres maintain virus detectors
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that monitor what is going on in the micro world.
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If we suddenly see certain microorganisms
show up a lot in a short time, we can react quickly
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and start counter measures.
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Which is the final step: Destroy.
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We basically need to build a machine that
is ready to destroy any pandemic threat
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before it has a chance to take over.
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We can do this with new tools that are being
developed right now, like nanofilters
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that pull dangers out of the air we breathe or
specialized UV lamps that just kill any virus
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before it has a chance to jump from person
to person.
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And of course, we need to get better at getting
new vaccines faster than ever before in history.
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If we do these three things, the chances are really
good that we can avoid
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a catastrophic pandemic in the future.
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Biotechnology, like any exciting and powerful
technology, is neither inherently good or bad.
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It has the potential to be both in breathtaking
ways.
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We have the chance to a future where we get
to truly control biology - our biology,
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the biology of the plants and animals around us
– and the biology of the microworld.
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So let’s use it to create a future where
we triumph over pandemics and diseases for good.
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This video was supported by Open Philanthropy.
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If you want to help and want to have a high
impact on the world,
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check out the biorisk career guide from 80,000 hours,
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a nonprofit organisation that helps people find careers
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that can tackle some of humanity's greatest problems
in the most efficient way.
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We put a link and further reading in the description
and sources.
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Aside from biorisk there are more guides to
check out too!
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Let us tell you about one of the most embarrassing
moments in kurzgesagt history,
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it’s a pretty great story.
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A few years ago we posted an image of a fake
evolutionary tree on social media.
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Just to post something nice, without thinking
about it.
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But we messed with the wrong birbs.
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Immediately we got thousands of messages
from you telling us how wrong it was, unscientific,
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bad.
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We underestimate that you take everything
that we put out into the world seriously and
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you set high standards for our research and
fact-checking process.
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This hurt.
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A lot.
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We wanted to be better than that.
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So we deleted it and contacted experts and
spent hundreds of hours on research and illustration
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and developed a new visualization of the relationships
between species that did not exist before.
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A Map of Evolution you can use to figure out
how closely you are related to a Flying Lemur:
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Expert approved.
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We were extremely proud of the result – and
since we had spent so much time on it,
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we turned it into a poster.
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And from that a new vision was born:
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We wanted to become the best infographic and scienceposter shop in the world.
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Today we’ve designed almost 100 posters
and sold over half a million copies
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– every single one made with love, care and lots of
attention to detail.
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All because you guys challenged us.
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Thank you so much for that and for supporting
our weird ideas and our sometimes weird Merch.
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Because of you we can continue to release
our videos for free for everyone and drop
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hundreds of hours into new concepts to spark
curiosity in people all around the world.
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Thank you so, so much for being part of our
vision – we literally couldn’t do it without you.
