A new article in Science Policy Forum voices concern about a particular line of biological research which, if successful in the long term, could eventually create a grave threat to humanity and to most life on Earth.

Fortunately, the threat is distant, and avoidable—but only if we have common knowledge of it.

What follows is an explanation of the threat, what we can do about it, and my comments.

Background: chirality

Glucose, a building block of sugars and starches, looks like this:

Adapted from Wikimedia

But there is also a molecule that is the exact mirror-image of glucose. It is called simply L-glucose (in contrast, the glucose in our food and bodies is sometimes called D-glucose):