WEBVTT

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It's a great time to be a molecular biologist. (Laughter)

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Reading and writing DNA code is getting easier

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and cheaper.

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By the end of this year, we'll be able to sequence

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the three million bits of information

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in your genome in less than a day

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and for less than 1,000 euros.

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Biotech is probably the most powerful

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and the fastest-growing technology sector.

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It has the power, potentially,

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to replace our fossil fuels,

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to revolutionize medicine,

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and to touch every aspect of our daily lives.

NOTE Paragraph

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So who gets to do it?

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I think we'd all be pretty comfortable with

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this guy doing it.

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But what about

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that guy? (Laughter)

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(Laughter)

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In 2009, I first heard about DIYbio.

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It's a movement that -- it advocates making biotechnology

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accessible to everyone,

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not just scientists and people in government labs.

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The idea is that if you open up the science

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and you allow diverse groups to participate,

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it could really stimulate innovation.

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Putting technology in the hands of the end user

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is usually a good idea because they've got the best idea

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of what their needs are.

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And here's this really sophisticated technology

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coming down the road, all these associated

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social, moral, ethical questions,

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and we scientists are just lousy at explaining to the public

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just exactly what it is we're doing in those labs.

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So wouldn't it be nice

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if there was a place in your local neighborhood

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where you could go and learn about this stuff,

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do it hands-on?

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I thought so.

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So, three years ago, I got together

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with some friends of mine who had similar aspirations

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and we founded Genspace.

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It's a nonprofit, a community biotech lab

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in Brooklyn, New York,

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and the idea was people could come,

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they could take classes and putter around in the lab

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in a very open, friendly atmosphere.

NOTE Paragraph

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None of my previous experience prepared me

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for what came next. Can you guess?

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The press started calling us.

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And the more we talked about how great it was to increase

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science literacy, the more they wanted to talk

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about us creating the next Frankenstein,

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and as a result, for the next six months,

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when you Googled my name,

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instead of getting my scientific papers, you got this.

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["Am I a biohazard?"]

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(Laughter)

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It was pretty depressing.

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The only thing that got us through that period

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was that we knew that all over the world,

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there were other people that were trying to do

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the same thing that we were.

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They were opening biohacker spaces, and some of them

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were facing much greater challenges than we did,

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more regulations, less resources.

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But now, three years later, here's where we stand.

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It's a vibrant, global community of hackerspaces,

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and this is just the beginning.

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These are some of the biggest ones,

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and there are others opening every day.

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There's one probably going to open up in Moscow,

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one in South Korea,

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and the cool thing is they each have their own

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individual flavor

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that grew out of the community they came out of.

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Let me take you on a little tour.

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Biohackers work alone.

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We work in groups,

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in big cities — (Laughter) —

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and in small villages.

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We reverse engineer lab equipment.

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We genetically engineer bacteria.

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We hack hardware,

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software,

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wetware,

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and, of course, the code of life.

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We like to build things.

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Then we like to take things apart.

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We make things grow.

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We make things glow.

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And we make cells dance.

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The spirit of these labs, it's open, it's positive,

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but, you know, sometimes when people think of us,

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the first thing that comes to mind is bio-safety,

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bio-security, all the dark side stuff.

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I'm not going to minimize those concerns.

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Any powerful technology is inherently dual use,

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and, you know, you get something like

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synthetic biology, nanobiotechnology,

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it really compels you, you have to look at both

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the amateur groups but also the professional groups,

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because they have better infrastructure,

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they have better facilities,

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and they have access to pathogens.

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So the United Nations did just that, and they recently

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issued a report on this whole area,

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and what they concluded was the power of this technology

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for positive was much greater than the risk for negative,

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and they even looked specifically at the DIYbio community,

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and they noted, not surprisingly, that the press

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had a tendency to consistently overestimate our capabilities

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and underestimate our ethics.

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As a matter of fact, DIY people from all over the world,

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America, Europe, got together last year,

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and we hammered out a common code of ethics.

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That's a lot more than conventional science has done.

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Now, we follow state and local regulations.

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We dispose of our waste properly, we follow

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safety procedures, we don't work with pathogens.

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You know, if you're working with a pathogen,

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you're not part of the biohacker community,

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you're part of the bioterrorist community, I'm sorry.

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And sometimes people ask me,

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"Well, what about an accident?"

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Well, working with the safe organisms that we normally

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work with, the chance of an accident happening

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with somebody accidentally creating, like,

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some sort of superbug,

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that's literally about as probable as a snowstorm

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in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

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Now, it could happen,

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but I'm not going to plan my life around it.

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I've actually chosen to take a different kind of risk.

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I signed up for something called the Personal Genome Project.

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It's a study at Harvard where, at the end of the study,

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they're going to take my entire genomic sequence,

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all of my medical information, and my identity,

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and they're going to post it online for everyone to see.

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There were a lot of risks involved that they talked about

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during the informed consent portion.

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The one I liked the best is,

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someone could download my sequence, go back to the lab,

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synthesize some fake Ellen DNA,

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and plant it at a crime scene. (Laughter)

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But like DIYbio, the positive outcomes and

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the potential for good for a study like that

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far outweighs the risk.

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Now, you might be asking yourself,

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"Well, you know, what would I do in a biolab?"

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Well, it wasn't that long ago we were asking, "Well,

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what would anyone do with a personal computer?"

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So this stuff is just beginning.

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We're only seeing just the tip of the DNA iceberg.

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Let me show you what you could do right now.

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A biohacker in Germany, a journalist, wanted to know

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whose dog was leaving little presents on his street?

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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Yep, you guessed it. He threw tennis balls

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to all the neighborhood dogs, analyzed the saliva,

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identified the dog, and confronted the dog owner.

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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I discovered an invasive species in my own backyard.

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Looked like a ladybug, right?

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It actually is a Japanese beetle.

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And the same kind of technology --

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it's called DNA barcoding, it's really cool --

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You can use it to check if your caviar is really beluga,

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if that sushi is really tuna, or if that goat cheese

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that you paid so much for is really goat's.

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In a biohacker space, you can analyze your genome

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for mutations.

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You can analyze your breakfast cereal for GMO's,

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and you can explore your ancestry.

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You can send weather balloons up into the stratosphere,

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collect microbes, see what's up there.

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You can make a biocensor out of yeast

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to detect pollutants in water.

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You can make some sort of a biofuel cell.

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You can do a lot of things.

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You can also do an art science project. Some of these

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are really spectacular, and they look at social,

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ecological problems from a completely different perspective.

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It's really cool.

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Some people ask me, well, why am I involved?

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I could have a perfectly good career in mainstream science.

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The thing is, there's something in these labs

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that they have to offer society that you can't find

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anywhere else.

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There's something sacred about a space where

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you can work on a project, and you don't have to justify

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to anyone that it's going to make a lot of money,

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that it's going to save mankind, or even that it's feasible.

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It just has to follow safety guidelines.

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If you had spaces like this all over the world,

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it could really change the perception

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of who's allowed to do biotech.

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It's spaces like these that spawned personal computing.

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Why not personal biotech?

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If everyone in this room got involved,

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who knows what we could do?

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This is such a new area, and as we say back in Brooklyn,

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you ain't seen nothin' yet. (Laughter)

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(Applause)