That's super scary.

I suspect that ecological collapse will probably have more to do with 'natural selection' than any technology we can produce.....which then reduces the options in front of a lot of us to little more than choice of grave site.

When the dying Bob Hope was asked by his wife where he wanted to be buried, he replied, "Surprise me." He was a realist. The future is far more uncertain than most of us think, particularly when it comes to extrapolating business-as-usual into the future.

It is extremely unlikely that anything about the first half of the twenty-first century will be even vaguely business-as-usual, as the present world order starts to disaggregate, which it is already starting to do....and force us to ask the really basic questions about what wealth and well being are, and what makes a society worth living in, in what will probably be adverse and hazardous circumstances, where life is shorter and harder than it is now.

There may be islands of the old order left, like the defense industry bases in post Soviet Russia, that were able to continue even as the economic base in the rest of the country collapsed. But their capital base was limited to defence technology, so there were very limited spinoffs into other economic sectors.

Good luck with that Jamie......

Why mention Darwin in the title? His theory remains just that, 160 years later. If he was alive today, he’d say what no scientist who values his/her job dares to admit - the evolution of species is a false hypothesis. I think the book would have more credibility if they changed the title.

Having a broadly accepted and legally established ethic for genetic manipulation will stop people from doing it in the same way that our current, draconian drug laws stop people from using banned substances. Metzl's international body will "make sure" in the same way that the current UN makes sure there's no war. Ha! Here is something SURE: genetic engineering will continue to get cheaper, easier, and more exact. Hundreds of thousands of people will try it; some will be disasters and some will be spectacular successes. As with other things Darwinian, it's the successes that really count.

I feel that this revolution is simply the next step for humans. I want to live as long as I choose and be healthy. Like he said, all this is inevitable.

darwin !? what did darwin have to do with it , the stunning complexity of the cell and its dna data library ,a couple of encyclopedia britannica's worth of info ,that has to be in place for said cell to function, and create all the thousands of different amino acids and enzymes needed to function rather overshadows Darwin's wee theory . Also as a some time programmer, the idea of tinkering in a program so complex ,we have only very recently discovered there is a t least 3 layers of code on the dna strand !. is so completely mad ,I would suggest anyone contemplating 'having a play' with it be locked up for life to protect us ,and them

And we’ll get even better evidence of the health damage, and costs, of industrial science.

The problem is that the poor will never see these advantages and te rich will be able to lord it over them even more than they do now. Imagine a world where every rich family's children will be super human compared to current genetic patterns while the poor will never have a chance to be exquisitely handsome, genius level intelligence, super athletic, super healthy all in one single being. There will be blood shed over this once they learn that their children will be the lesser serfs of the powerful

It looks like for the first time in history we may actually have Intelligent Design.

@ Martinkudu. Careful, your religion is showing. Evolution is a fact just like gravity. Both have theories that describe how they work. Those will always be theories and the facts will always be facts. Objects will always fall in a gravitational field and life will always evolve.
Facts and theories in science are 2 separate things and one never becomes the other.