Published: 05-12-2025
Synthetic human genomes are being developed faster than society can govern them. Good intentions won’t prevent misuse. Without early, values-led scrutiny, we risk creating a technology whose risks become apparent long before its benefits.
Published: 04-12-2025
We live in a century shaped by loss – of habitats, species and ecological certainty. The idea of reviving extinct creatures can be seductive. But resurrection isn’t just scientific: it is deeply moral, forcing us to ask what a virtuous relationship with nature – based on respect, care and humility – should look like in an age of extinction.
Published: 07-10-2025
As the IUCN World Conservation Congress opens in Abu Dhabi, members face a pivotal choice between embracing genetic engineering as a conservation tool or pausing to apply the precautionary principle to these rapidly advancing technologies.
Published: 12-06-2025
A Bigger Conversation will be collaborating with the University of Edinburgh, The Nuffield Council on Bioethics and others on a new project from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). Part of its Synthetic Plants programme, the aim of the project is to take a holistic approach to designing governance frameworks.
Published: 06-02-2025
Will the 50th anniversary ‘Spirit of Asilomar’ conference on the future of biotechnology recapture the expansive moral considerations of the pre-1975 Asilomar discussion? Or will it serve as the latest effort bolstering professional immunity from public oversight?
Published: 18-12-2024
In 2024 we briefly considered – but rejected – a cheeky suggestion to bring back the provocative term ‘Frankenfoods’. The days of that kind of polemic may have passed but, as we note in our year-end reflection, the story of the Modern Prometheus still has something to teach us about foresight and accountability.
Published: 05-08-2024
In its 2019 report on Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the UK government describes a future characterised by a fusion of technologies and a blurring of the lines between the physical, digital and biological worlds. Prof Brigitte Nerlich, offers her thoughts on responsibility in a bio-hybrid world where fact meets fiction.
Published: 26-09-2022
Citizen views are integral to ensuring that technologies and science responds to the needs and wants of society at large. Our new review concludes it’s time to make meaningful citizen engagement part of the DNA of the regulatory process.
Published: 10-01-2020
We need an active public debate on the ethics of gene editing technology to realise its potential and prevent it being used in nefarious ways.
