169. Programming Life, Preventing Bioterrorism and Viruses that Kill Cancer | Andrew Hessel

Andrew Hessel (@andrewhessel) is the CEO of Humane Genomics Inc., a seed-stage company developing virus-based therapies for cancer, starting with dogs and also co-founded the Genome Project-write, an international scientific effort working to engineer large genomes, including the human genome.

Andy has been Singularity University faculty since 2009 and from 2012-2017 was the Distinguished Researcher at Autodesk Life Sciences.

Andy's goal is to help people better understand and use living systems to meet the needs of society and he has written articles on genetic technology for The Atlantic, Wired UK, and Huffington Post and given over 100 invited talks on next-generation biotechnology.

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In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:

* How we can use viruses to kill cancer

* The reason synthetic biology is THE technology of this century

* Why CRISPR babies we an inevitability and why we didn't discuss them beforehand

* How we can prevent biotech from becoming problematic

* Why Andrew isn't all that worried about bioterrorism

* The reason students should study biological systems

* How healthcare and pharma transform as we edit the code of life

* The important differences between our ability to read and write genomes

* What gene drives mean for the future of our species

* Why viruses are the low hanging fruit of fighting disease

* What biotech can mean for the sustainability of our planet

* Why Andrew is fundamentally optimist about our future

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