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The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

With genetic engineering, we will be able to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race. But it will be a slow process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the effect of changes to the genetic code.

Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.

We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.

The theory of undirected evolution is already dead, but the work of science continues.

In the last century, as we learned more about genes, we were able to devise ways of accelerating evolution.

We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation.

Species go extinct because there are historical contraints built into a given body or a given design.

I thought we'd just sequence the genome once and that would be sufficient for most things in people's lifetimes. Now we're seeing how changeable and adaptable it is, which is why we're surviving and evolving as a species.

Where we are going as a species is a big question. Human evolution certainly hasn't stopped. Every time individuals produce a new zygote, there's a reshuffling and recombination of genes. And we don't know where all of that is going to take us.