Under what circumstances would we manipulate Earth’s climate to ward off risk? One scheme under consideration involves mimicking massive volcanoes that blast sun-shading dust into the stratosphere. Our class’s final topic is planetary engineering, as in the movies Dune and Snowpiercer. Who would she be without language, history and culture? They understand the difference between cloning a saber-toothed tiger for the circus and restoring the fabric and community of life. They wonder whether the ability to resurrect a species tomorrow might weaken efforts to save it today.

Other students hope some technologies can be avoided. One resurrected ibex survived for a few minutes after birth. Using a tiny tissue sample taken before the last ibex died, scientists implanted its cells into the eggs of surrogate goat mothers. There are good reasons, for instance, to freeze individual tissue samples from endangered species. For some students, the answer is clearly no. If you can bring back a mammoth, could you resurrect smallpox or influenza from a genetic sequence? Could someone engineer a new super pathogen, unleash a Franken-bug?īecause a technology can cause harm, we discuss whether it can be rendered obsolete. We ask how technologies could go wrong or be used for intentional harm. Who sets the rules of gene editing? Will the poor have equal access to, or protection from, a given technology? Students examine the history of each technology and the ethics and governance of its use.

Think Jurassic Park for resurrecting species or the uber-astronauts of Gattaca for gene editing. In my course Control of Nature, we use movies to introduce technologies that are turning science fiction into reality. Thinking globally instead of locally, would you ever let planetary engineers twiddle the Earth’s climate like a thermostat? I may never see this world, but Stanford students might.

What would you pay to glimpse a dodo or a woolly mammoth? If you could select your child’s traits from a catalog before birth - or even clone yourself - would you? Choices like these are coming to a future near you.

Mad father controls