Source: Reason
by Katherine Mangu-Ward
“You can now eat a steak grown from cow cells that never saw a pasture, taste cheese made with whey protein brewed by microbes that have never passed through an udder, wear a diamond formed from lab-coaxed carbon, and shake hands with someone who has an ear 3D printed from her own cartilage cells. For a couple of decades now, we’ve been replacing bladders and tracheas and sections of burned flesh with living tissue that started in a sterile lab and ended up integrated into someone’s body, pumping blood, producing mucus, or just sitting there looking pretty and unscarred. There’s always a backlash. Words such as unnatural, fake, Frankenfood, and synthetic get thrown around like accusations. The assumption is that anything born in a lab must be lesser, or at least deeply suspicious.” (for publication 10/25)