Making perfect life? (STOA)

Recently, a new set of bio-engineering fields have developed, which promise that the organic world can be controlled, designed and built – technology is becoming biology and biology is becoming technology. In two phases, the project describes four emerging fields – engineering of the body, living artefacts, the brain and intelligent artefacts. The first phase, running in 2010, explores the the state of the art in science and technology in the four fields and maps relevant research projects within the ongoing European Framework Program, taking into account ethical, legal and social aspects surrounding these techno-scientific developments. Their relevance for the European Parliament will be discussed during a conference. In the second phase, covering 2011, a specific case from each of the four fields will be studied, focussing on what is needed from a policy and political perspective. The project is carried out by the Rathenau Institute together with the Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS), the Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschaetzung of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ITA) and the Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung ISI, as members of the European Technology Assessment Group (ETAG). Based on previous projects on Synthetic Biology, ITA covers the part on “engineering living artefacts”.