Imagine this: you’re out with friends, and you’re contemplating another glass of wine despite the fact that you feel a bug coming on. Normally, you’d make a spontaneous decision based on how you think you feel both now and tomorrow. But what if you could be sure of it? In this Future Tech podcast, Genome Editing, we visit with Eleonore Pauwels, the Director of Biology Collectives with the Science and Technology Program at the Woodrow Wilson Scholar Institute in Washington, D.C. Pauwels delves deep into “the democratization of genomics and biology”, the goal of which is for people to have 24/7 control of their health and even environment—imagine being able to determine that the restaurant food that you’re about to eat is contaminated with salmonella. She also explains how such a decentralization will allow someone with a certain type of leukemia, for example, to monitor their cancer levels every 1-2 weeks from their home–convenient for someone living far from their doctor or with mobility issues. She goes on to disclose the various factors preventing this application from being widely available yet (even though the technology exists) before ending with several questions that will have you looking forward to the future. You’ll also learn: How one company in China could be onto a breakthrough that will revolutionize how you read and interpret all aspects of not only your biological data but also that of thousands, perhaps millions, more How a digital avatar of yourself could monitor how you’re evolving—in real time How the “dark side” of this power to control your health could also ruin it, as well as that of millions of people, unless you have a secret weapon—the “liquid biopsy”