Sure, the magazine’s list includes items about topics such as borders, juntas and terrorism. But it also touches on transgenics, disease and robots:
(descriptions from FP’s site)
#6 The American Heartland Grows Crops — with Human Proteins
Farmers have long experimented with crops bred to produce better yields, with few ill effects. But with little public debate, something entirely newrice engineered to produce human proteinsis coming to a grocery store near you. In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) authorized Ventria Bioscience to grow as many as 3,200 acres of special rice that produces proteins normally found in breast milk.
Trends in Latin America and Southeast Asia have epidemiologists especially worried. The number of dengue cases in Latin America exploded to an estimated 1 million in 2007, twice the amount in 2006. Paraguay declared a state of emergency in March, and even Puerto Rico was logging 500 cases a week at the height of its outbreak. By October, 183 people had died in the region. Southeast Asia was also hit hard. Indonesia clocked 123,500 cases by October, with more than 1,250 people dead. Significant outbreaks have flared up in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Although there is no vaccine, it doesn’t have to be this way. Singapore got its dengue problem largely under control by running the world’s toughest war on mosquitoes. Others should follow its lead.
#10 Armed Robots Take the Field in Iraq
However, the military isn’t quite ready to shelve their human counterparts just yet. The SWORDS robots now seeing action in Iraq are manned by soldiers who remotely control their every move. But this new development does raise serious ethical and technological issues about the future of intelligent machines in war. As Peter W. Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, says, “If something goes wrong–and it always will–who is responsible? It’s a classic question from science fiction, and yet our laws are so far silent on it.”
And we should also mention FP’s Passport, a great blog written by the magazine’s editors.
-Greg Dahlmann