Chapters

Genomics is leaving the lab. DNA technologies are moving from specialist science into medicine, ancestry, food, fertility, policing, conservation, industry and defence.

We can now read, edit and build with DNA at increasing speed and scale. Like AI before large language models, tools once reserved for experts are moving toward broad use. The difference is that genomics does not merely generate words or pictures. It reads and changes living systems, the biosphere and even ourselves, forever.

The book follows that change across nine connected chapters. This is not a tour of distant science. It is a map of where genomics is already turning up: in hospitals, family trees, police work, food systems, biodiversity projects, startups, national databases and, sooner or later, probably something in your fridge. Start anywhere; the public conversation is already running late, given the enormity of The Genomic Power Shift.

Because every one of these nine chapters is already touching someone’s ordinary week — a hospital appointment, a DNA-test gift, a supermarket label, a police case — whether or not they know about it. The time is now for all of us to take back control of our genomic future.