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A breathtaking scientific revolution is taking place – biotechnology has been progressing at stunning speed, giving us the tools to eventually gain control over biology.
一场令人叹为观止的科学革命正在发生——生物技术正以惊人的速度发展，为我们提供了最终控制生物学的工具。
On the one hand solving the deadliest diseases while also creating viruses more dangerous than nuclear bombs, able to devastate humanity. What is going on?
一方面解决了最致命的疾病，同时也制造了比核弹更危险的病毒，能够摧毁人类。发生了什么？
Biotechnology is increasingly everywhere. The cotton in your clothes, the vegetables you eat, your dog. Humans manipulate living things.
生物技术越来越无处不在。你衣服里的棉花，你吃的蔬菜，你的狗。人类操纵生物。
We use bacteria to produce insulin, connect prosthetics directly with our brains and make industrial enzymes to produce paper.
我们利用细菌生产胰岛素，将假肢直接连接到我们的大脑，制造工业酶来生产纸张。
Gene therapy creates cures to previously untreatable diseases while we are working on food crops resistant to climate change.
基因疗法为以前无法治愈的疾病创造了治疗方法，而我们正在研究抗气候变化的粮食作物。
Our mastery over biology has been speeding up so much that within weeks of the first Covid 19 case, the unknown coronavirus was broken down in laboratories and analysed.
我们对生物学的掌握速度如此之快，以至于在第一例新冠病例出现后的几周内，这种未知的冠状病毒就在实验室中被分解和分析。
Scientists generated a copy of its genetic material to create a vaccine that was ready for testing months after the pandemic began.
科学家们复制了它的遗传物质，制造了一种疫苗，在疫情开始几个月后就可以进行测试。
Something unthinkable a decade ago. Where is all this sudden progress coming from? Well, it's complicated.
十年前不可想象的事情。所有这些突然的进步从何而来？这很复杂。
But in a nutshell: really expensive things got cheap and knowledge of how to do impressive things spread freely.
但简而言之：真正昂贵的东西变得便宜了，而如何做伟大事情的知识却自由传播。
The Human Genome Project starting in 1990 was the first major attempt to read human DNA in its entirety. 13 years and $3 billion later, it was complete.
1990年启动的人类基因组计划是首次对人类DNA进行完整解读的重大尝试。历时13年，投资30亿美元，它终于完成了。
By then the cost of decoding a human genome had fallen to about $100 million.
到那时，解码人类基因组的成本已降至约1亿美元。
Today it is 100,000 times cheaper, costing only about $1000. How is that possible?
如今，它便宜了10万倍，仅需约1000美元。这是怎么做到的？
Converting DNA into computer data and then studying it used to be a super tedious process, taking expert humans around 3 years of manual work.
将DNA转换成计算机数据，然后对其进行研究，曾经是一个极其繁琐的过程，需要专家大约3年的手工工作。
Today it takes about two weeks and is almost completely automated.
如今，它大约需要两周时间，而且几乎完全自动化。
Biotechnology has gone from something restricted to the best and well-funded laboratories staffed by the world's top experts, to something affordable enough for hundreds of thousands of people to casually work on.
生物技术已经从仅限于世界顶级专家组成的最好的、资金充足的实验室，发展成为数十万人可以随意研究的负担得起的东西。
What has sped up the process even more is that information in the field is shared widely and freely.
进一步加快这一进程的是，该领域的信息被广泛和自由地共享。
Cutting-edge discoveries now take just about a year to be copied in laboratories around the world,
如今，尖端发现只需一年左右的时间就能在世界各地的实验室中复制，
a few years for anyone with a biology background to work out, and a bit over a decade for high school students to experiment with them in schools.
任何具有生物学背景的人都只需几年时间就能完成，高中生在学校进行实验则需要十多年时间。
Imagine that your local computer repair shop could build a pristine Iphone 11 with just the parts lying around, and that teenagers are asked to build a new Iphone 5 for homework.
想象一下，您当地的电脑维修店可以仅使用零件组装出一台崭新的iPhone11，而青少年则被要求组装一台新的iPhone5作为家庭作业。
Not a crappy homemade version, the real thing. This is what is going on right now in biotechnology – a true revolution.
不是蹩脚的自制版本，而是真正的产品。这就是生物技术领域正在发生的事情——一场真正的革命。
We are adding knowledge at unprecedented rates, while things get ever faster and cheaper to do. This speed means we can expect even more wonderful things for humanity.
我们正在以前所未有的速度增加知识，而事情变得越来越快，成本也越来越低。这种速度意味着我们可以期待人类出现更多美妙的事情。
Lifesaving treatments, miracle crops and solutions to problems we can't even imagine right now. But unfortunately progress cuts both ways.
救命的治疗方法、神奇的作物和我们现在甚至无法想象的解决问题的方案。但不幸的是，发展是双向的。
What can be used for good, can also be used for bad, by accident or on purpose.
可以利好的东西，也可以用于坏事，无论是意外还是故意。
For all the good biotech will do for us, in the near future it also could easily kill many millions of people, in the worst case hundreds of millions.
尽管生物技术为我们带来了诸多好处，但在不久的将来，它也可能轻易杀死数百万人，最坏的情况下甚至数亿人。
Worse than any nuclear bomb. The world just witnessed how fast the novel coronavirus spread.
它比任何核弹都可怕。世界刚刚见证了新冠病毒传播的速度。
We still do not know for sure if it came from nature or was the result of an accidental leak from a lab working with corona viruses, that's still subject to scientific debate. In the end at least 7 million people died.
我们仍然不确定它是来自大自然，还是来自研究冠状病毒的实验室的意外泄漏，这仍有待学界讨论。最终至少有700万人死亡。
And this was still a relatively mild virus that didn't cause serious disease in most of those infected. But that might change in the future.
而且这仍然是一种相对温和的病毒，不会在大多数感染者中引起严重疾病。但这种情况在未来可能会改变。
Wherever the last pandemic came from, the next one might very well be our own fault – in a sense, many things going on in biotechnology could lead to this.
无论上一次大流行来自哪里，下一次大流行很可能是我们自己的过错——从某种意义上说，生物技术领域的许多事情都可能导致这种情况。
Most of all how easy it is to work with dangerous viruses. Thousands of scientists can simply order the genetic data of infectious virus samples online to experiment with them.
最重要的是，处理危险病毒是多么容易。成千上万的科学家可以简单地在线订购传染性病毒样本的基因数据来对它们进行实验。
Assembling these into an artificial virus in 2023 costs about as much as a new car, including all the lab equipment.
2023年将它们组装成人造病毒的成本大约相当于一辆新车，包括所有实验室设备。
