Regensis program reviews

We are passionate about leading individuals from their lives of addiction, poor life choices, and crime to a more positive and productive life.

Our Regenesis recovery program is a Christ-centered residential personal development program for men and women struggling with lifestyles that have produced dysfunctional and destructive behavioral issues. Our intakes come from all over the region where they are provided a safe and professional environment to begin their recovery.

We also offer biblical counseling to help meet our students' needs. George Church, a professor at Harvard Medical School, is at the center of that; he's involved in the Personal Genome Project--which hopes to sequence , people and use the genetic information as a public resource for researchers. You may have seen him on the Colbert Report, with a big Moses-style beard, brandishing a tiny dot of DNA that had 20 million copies of his book encoded within it.

We could engineered people out of 'right-handed' molecules rather than left-handed, for example, and thus make these 'mirror humans' immune to normal diseases of all kinds and unfortunately unable to eat food that wasn't also made of 'right-handed' molecules. We could genetically engineer humans for immunity to all sorts of viruses some people are already immune to HIV, for example, thanks to a beneficent mutation.

He's even in favor of my favorite nutty idea, cloning Neanderthals to see what would happen. After the hardback copy of this book came out, women contacted him to volunteer themselves as surrogate mother to a Neanderthal child. The power of this technology is really impressive, and when Church covers that it's fascinating. In the great debate over bio-ethics, I generally fall on the 'I want my monkey-man' side of the equations.

I am not particularly sentimental, I don't believe that you can't monkey with human nature it's human nature to monkey with human nature or that the present human condition is itself 'natural' in any meaningful way.

But sometimes Church's attitude gave me the willies a little bit. When Church referred to E. Coli bacteria as 'tiny, obedient factories", I found that a little creepy. And while it's fascinating that you can genetically engineer a mouse with enough human DNA to make our antibodies interchangeable and hence use the mice antibodies to help cure disease , the idea of a patented, proprietary species of mice also bothers me on some fundamental way.

This is a common reaction; you may recall George W. Bush decrying 'animal-human hybrids' in a State of the Union, and President Obama reported having 'real concerns' after the first cell with a synthetic genome was created. Unfortunately, the book is incredibly uneven. Some chapters of the book are very technical in ways that were hard for me to follow while other portions explain technical subjects with great clarity.

Sometimes information is presented in a confusing way; a technical description of the replication of DNA shows up several chapters before the explanation of how that could be used to defeat viral infections. Other times Church seemed to be writing for a very small audience of geneticists, engaging internecine disputes with folks like J.

Craig Ventner over things that I didn't entirely understand. And of course Church at times is flogging his own research and startups that he's started, and there I felt as if I had to take his arguments with a grain of slate. Perhaps, given the speed at which the field is changing, it's just hard to write a book that summarizes where it's at and where it's likely to go. However, I think I would have much preferred an attempt by a popular science writer who wasn't so close to the subject he was writing about and who could get a measure of distance from it.

Given its likely importance for the future, I think a book like that would be really valuable. A lot of radical, eyebrow-raising food though. The book was divided into 9 chapters, and the beginning was a little overwhelming, kind of acting as a prologue, summarizing the whole book. The subsequent chapters were interesting to read, with engrossing experiments, anecdotes and musings.

There were a few parts - regarding the business side of a venture - that went above my head, but also a few parts that I hungrily ate up, devouring the content! So, 3. So, all in all, it was not mind-blowing due to my lack of interest in some of the topics raised , but the parts that did catch my attention, were written excellently.

Dec 25, Mike rated it really liked it. There are many flaws: too many details about Church's many startups, abrupt switches between relatively technical biological language for a non-biologist and language appropriate in a mass market book. In the end, though, these flaws are minor. Church is one of the biggest thinkers of our time, and his ideas are among the most important.

We're at the start of a revolution in biology that could dwarf the computer revolution, and Church is among the leaders. If you're at all interested in where There are many flaws: too many details about Church's many startups, abrupt switches between relatively technical biological language for a non-biologist and language appropriate in a mass market book. If you're at all interested in where science is leading us, this book is essential reading.

Mirror Humans, as they call them, would be a completely synthetic new race of men, with every molecule in their bodies inverted from its natural form. They likely w ''The complete synthesis of a mirror life form from the atoms up would be the next, and perhaps final, step in the overthrow of vitalism.

They likely wouldn't be able to have children naturally, but Church and Regis claim that by the point of molecular inversion the human race will most likely be primarily conceiving artificially anyway so it doesn't really matter. The fact that these Mirror Humans would not be able to interact meaningfully with natural biological or ecological systems is also brushed passed with the casual implication that we'd synthetically recreate virtually everything on earth until only a simulacra of our original planet remained.

While the work presented in this book is astounding—and there are some seemingly brilliant ideas and developments coming out of synthetic biology as a field—huge swaths of this book really seem to mostly be treatises on how playing God—including the creation of entirely new lifeforms, from component elements, with defined evolutionary directions coded into their artificial DNA—is a good thing and doesn't come with any significant moral, philosophical, or spiritual implications at all.

There's something so grotesquely mechanical about it all. The attempt to reduce humanity down to its component materials without wondering if there's anything beyond that. Church and Regis even admit that there are questions being uncovered by synthetic biology that researchers seem completely unable to answer.

Amino acid homochirality is apparently so seemingly inexplicable that it's barely even been speculated on This desire for total syntheticity seems to primarily stem from the fact that Church and Regis have an almost all-consuming vendetta against vitalism—the idea that living beings are inherently different to inanimate objects.

The entire overarching mission of synthetic biology seems to be the debunking of life as a meaningful concept, to render it a state no different to the 'on' state of a machine. The last hurdles to that, apparently, are imbuing entirely synthetic cells with spontaneous motion and successfully creating 'self-aware' artificial intelligence. At which point we would, theoretically, be able to build a sentient life form from the ground up. Church and Regis never stop to ask whether or not this synthetic life form—with skin grown on trees, bactoblood running through its veins, and a mechanical brain controlling its synthetic ultra-tensile musculature—would actually be a life form at all, rather than a highly complex and convincing artificial representation of life.

To the synthetic biologist, if a machine eats, drinks, and replicates itself, then it's as alive as any organic life form.

In my view, a robot made of flesh is still a robot. But maybe Church and Regis agree with me, it's just that they see all natural organic life as flesh-robots. Church and Regis do acknowledge that, no matter what they do, a synthetic cell never seems to come to life. A cell can be significantly, even mostly, synthetic, and it'll survive for at least a while. But totally synthetic cells are dead on arrival. This never causes any kind of questioning. Church and Regis's worldview is so dogmatically anti-spiritual that they never question if there's potentially something they're missing.

If there's some element of life that goes beyond the purely chemical. No, they just haven't figured out the right balance of chemicals to spontaneously create life. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Church and Regis also seem to have a strangely anti-evolutionary worldview.

They apparently buy into sociological narratives of evolution having stopped—which is, according to them, why synthetic biology and the ability to rewrite the genome are so necessary—and have a particularly strange perspective on natural human genetics. One very mild example is that Church and Regis claim that who we marry is an entirely conscious decision devoid of genetic influence.

They ignore—or reject—the fact that dozens of different studies over the last few decades have found that there are multitudinous ways in which our genetics play into every aspect of picking relationships, from life-partners right down to best friends.

Taking note of some recent, particularly well publicised studies, it's been found that, on average, married couples tend to be the genetic equivalent of fourth cousins, and that relationships with a higher degree of genetic closeness tend to last longer and produce more offspring even when accounting for differences in relationship lengths. Church and Regis claim to want to use synthetic biology to create extreme genetic diversity. They want to transcend the already controversial modern cosmopolitan state and create a society where each individual human is radically genetically distinct from even his closest family.

The problem is, Church and Regis never question what the implications are for this extreme genetic diversity—beyond rote, surface level sci-fi platitudes. It's a genuine concern that we could end up with a society where people are unable to form meaningful long term relationships—as relationships, as far as we can tell, tend to be significantly predicated on genetic closeness, with genetically dissimilar relationships being severe outliers.

Church and Regis seem to have deliberately? I think the aforementioned worldview in fact informs the entire field of synthetic biology. While Church and Regis are decidedly materialistic—actively rejecting any notion of spirituality and even any meaningful distinction between life and death—they still seem to believe in total human free-will. They seem to believe that consciousness—with the exception of mental illness—is entirely devoid of significant genetic influence.

Synthetic biology itself seems to be a kind of progressive transhumanism, with the goal of externalising that idea of total free will as the ability to exert that will over every cell in the human body. Some of the ideas of synthetic biology are incredible. Using genetically modified bacteria to clean wastewater and produce clean electricity in the process, or using genetically modified photosynthetic bacteria to produce viable crude oil almost in the same way beer is brewed, or genetically modifying natural gut bacteria to secrete appetite suppressing compounds to help combat obesity; even genetically modifying the human genome to make us completely cancer, virus, and eventually radiation resistant has a certain appeal—even if it does bring to mind Frederik Pohl's sci-fi body-horror story, Man Plus.

The problem is that many of the ideas of synthetic biology also come with a level of intellectual arrogance that borders on absurdity. Church and Regis talk about creating entirely new creatures and species wholesale from component pieces, like a zoo of Frankenstein's Monsters put together on a molecular level; or completely reversing the chirality of everyone and everything on earth; or randomising the genomes of everyone on earth to reduce family and ethnicity down to nothing but a flimsy social construct, atomising the entire human species, reducing us each to disconnected individuals existing in a state of complete genetic solitude.

All of this, despite Church and Regis admitting that they know virtually nothing about many of the systems they want to radically alter. In a way I respect that. There's an almost victorian romanticism to a researcher diving headfirst into the uncharted waters of a completely new research field, toying around with the atomic elements of life itself without quite understanding them.

What I respect less is that same researcher then assuming that because he understands the surface of his new field of study that he's now in a position to start reforming the world in his image. Church and Regis believe they should, because they've mastered changing a few genome codings, be able to remake not just themselves, not just their families, not just their country, not even just the inhabited, industrialised world, but the entire planet, oceans and skies and air and maybe even the planets beyond.

At one point they discuss sequencing everyone on Earth's genome and holding that data in a big computer network accessible by governments and medical officials. Apparently the only possible downside to this is how much space it would take up.

Church and Regis describe privacy as ''a highly overrated asset. But—in much the same way that someone applying for an office job lists their main flaws as 'being a perfectionist' and 'working too much'—Church and Regis list only those dangers which aren't really dangers at all.

None of the huge and obvious implications are touched on, just things like how we might have to allocate more space to nature reserves if we bring back extinct animals.

A 'danger' so small that it can hardly even be considered as such. As was the case when I read Klaus Schwab's book, i wonder if the inability to see the horrific implications of the proposals in this book stem from the fact that other than Church's own research the majority of citations in Regenesis are viral design concepts by students and books by popular authors—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Ray Kurzweil, Stephen Pinker I get the impression that there's a problem amongst our elites where they outsource their imaginations to people who they consider to be creative and imaginative but who, in reality, are just as creatively dead as they are.

This leads to a problem where neither the elites, nor the elites' chosen imaginatives, see the potentially horrifying consequences of what they're working toward.

But, despite being short sighted and megalomaniacal, Church and Regis must be commended, at least, for their ability to communicate their research. The first third of the book is basically the world's greatest crash course in molecular and chemical biology. It's just a shame that, when it comes to their own field, they tend to obfuscate or not discuss the darker implications of what they're working toward—whether this is intentional or not is mostly irrelevant.

It's a shame. While Church and Regis have potential to be a great force for good, they're victims of their own psychological profiles. They're members of that tragic archetype: the supervillain who wants to make the world a better place at all costs, ignoring all the destructive, hideous things they'll have to do to get to their utopia, and the potentially horrific implications of the utopia they're actually striving toward.

The field of synthetic biology is fascinating, and potentially very exciting, but George Church and Ed Regis are abysmal spokesmen.

Oct 09, Carlos rated it did not like it Shelves: non-fiction , general-science. This book started out great and got progressively worse and worse. The authors start by describing one of the most exciting results of genetic engineering, biodegradable plastic that was grown from genetically modified bacterial cultures and go on to describe the incredible potential of this field. Unfortunately the book then shifts tone and while still describing the potential for developing new materials, or improving healthcare, the authors, especially in sections seemed to be written by Chur This book started out great and got progressively worse and worse.

Unfortunately the book then shifts tone and while still describing the potential for developing new materials, or improving healthcare, the authors, especially in sections seemed to be written by Church, become more self-aggrandizing and start dwelling on the umpteenth startup company that they started to capitalize on this potential. Similarly, while the book present ever more ground-breaking ideas, like changing the human genome to make humanity immune to viruses!

Overall this book turned from an exciting window into the world of genetic engineering to one of bombastic predictions and obdurate hand-waving in the face of genuine concerns. Jul 26, Dave Robison rated it it was amazing. In addition, it casts a cautious eye to the future, pointing out the break-throughs that are just around the corner and offers salient questions for what lies beyond.

The first chapters were a challenge, addressing the hard science of molecular biology and cellular anatomy, but they laid a foundation for the remarkable content "Regenesis" is an amazing read that articulately describes the past and present of synth-bio research and the astonishing achievements of the innovative minds exploring it. The first chapters were a challenge, addressing the hard science of molecular biology and cellular anatomy, but they laid a foundation for the remarkable content yet to come.

What I enjoyed most about it was the clear connection between the research, the people conducting it, and the cultural institutions that contributed or participated in its development. From cover to cover, this was an excellent resource for anyone interested in building a comprehensive overview of the very real biology of the not-so-distant future that will quite literally transform our lives. A tough read, but worth the work I usually read science books by science writers.

This is a science book by a scientist, and thus it was hard for a lay person. I advise not being disheartened by the early chapters. Later chapters touch more on the possibilities and are far more comprehensible for those of us who went to school before they taught DNA.

Synthetic biology is fascinating, and the fact that Church is one of the prominent people in the field makes it even more interesting,. Oct 15, Charles rated it liked it. Interesting, but a little disappointing..

Not scientific enough for those who know a little molecular biology; not general enough for those who don't. A few thought-provoking insights, but not as ground-breaking as I thought it would be.

A collaborative effort by a scientist-writer and a layman-writer also made for a cumulatively awkward literary style. Starting this book, I was hoping to gain new insights into the field of biotechnology. By picking up different pieces of knowledge, I consequently wanted to develop a basic understanding. In addition to that, it is the question of how future society may look like that excites me. And it seemed very promising at first. Church integrated several interesting topics cunningly into the history of life on our planet.

Therefore, we learn about the possibilities of genetic engineering through the l Starting this book, I was hoping to gain new insights into the field of biotechnology. Therefore, we learn about the possibilities of genetic engineering through the lens of the past itself.

Looking at the table of content, the author cleverly connected the current stages of development with historical episodes. In the beginning, we learn about the underlying biochemical principles by exploring the early development of cells millions of years ago. Radical new opportunities, like recreating mammoths, are equally addressed as struggles and challenges regarding our health and well-being that occurred throughout history.

Consequently, the author presents gene-therapy and other techniques as prone to solve these problems in the future. By mapping the course of past industrial revolutions, he also embeds the only recent history of synthetic biology with its successes and dropbacks. And here, I began to struggle with this book.

I really enjoyed how the author combined the distinct topics within an embracing theme. But over the course of the single chapters, I felt that he increasingly lost his focus. Especially the later chapters seemed overloaded. There were some scientific facts, personal experiences, and portraits of the academic community mixed repeatedly and without connection.

In my opinion, he has framed a great overall scheme but then disregarded the reading coherency and merely stuffed everything that he could think of into the appropriate chapters.

This frequently disrupted my reading flow and I was annoyed by the lack of connectivity. Furthermore, I was appalled by many claims and conclusions that G.

Church draws regarding what we should do in the future- basically about the moral of the story. There is one that troubles me above all else: In the "epigenetic epilogue" the author distinguishes some complimentary developmental directions for future society, including the theme privacy vs.

He points out that privacy is a very recent phenomenon, unfamiliar in past societies. Additionally, he compares us to computers and artificial intelligence and the key role of informational transparency, contradicting privacy.

Influenced by the alludes and rhetoric questions the reader draws the conclusion that privacy is responsible for many problems in modern society. However, in my opinion, privacy allows the individual to define himself.

We all share a certain predisposition that is encoded in our genes and equips us with talents and weaknesses. But we are still in many ways free to choose our own destiny. And that means deciding which abilities to foster and which ones to disregard.

Thus, it is our choices and our personal goals that define who we are. But that also implies that we have to withdraw traits and habits from others that undermine who we want to be. On the other hand, if we allow that our genetic code, our operation manual, to be published, we will lose the freedom to define ourselves. Our abilities, written down in a four-letter-language, will limit our choices and diminish our freedom. Don't forget it is this opportunity- to choose who we want to be - that equips us with individuality and sets us apart from animals.

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