Making Perfect Life - Bio-Engineering (in) the 21st century

Abstract

This document is the result of the preparatory phase of the STOA-project “Making perfect life”, that defined the project focus. This resulted in the study document Making Perfect Life: Bio-engineering (in) the 21st century. A project plan for the next two phases was developed and a project team was set up. A kick-off meeting with potential project partners was instrumental in discussing and prioritising research themes and issues. This meeting took place on 6 October 2009 at the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. “Making perfect life” refers to a new set of engineering capabilities and ambitions that have developed at the beginning of this century. This study explains and illustrates this by looking at four different domains of bio-engineering: engineering of the body; engineering of living artefacts; engineering of the brain; engineering of intelligent artefacts. There is a need to reflect from a societal point of view on the new developments in these engineering fields within the life sciences and info-cogno sciences.