The Bees' Police

Policing genes - 2010 © Thomas Thwaites


Policing genes, futuristic project of designer Thomas Thwaite, is funded by the Centre for Security and Crime Sciences to stop illegal and unlicensed pharmaceutical drugs being grown from genetically modified plants. Thwaites attended a crash course in Synthetic Biology and now anticipates that since it is easy to download DNA sequences from the internet, and insert the genes of one plant into another, the average gardener can potentialy transform broad bean into an hybrid with the DNA of cocaine.

















© Thomas Thwaites

These possible futures are influenced by the current laboratories experiences on tomatoes that produce a vaccine for Alzheimer's disease, or potatoes that immunize against Hepatitis B. To help the London Police, using roof beehives, Thwaites has thought of using the genius of bees hunting for pollen to detect the producing of illegal plant-made-pharmaceuticals : what more efficient police than the bee which goes everywhere - indoors and outdoors - with little noticing ? Policing genes implies there is no limit to city surveillance and state control.










Video on display at the Wellcome Collection, projects created for the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art, offering an alternative view on how science could influence our future, inspire debate about the human consequences of technological futures, both positive and negative.