Spider silk thread is relatively much stronger than steel and can even be made by a living being. Woven it would be capable to resist the impact of a bullet, much like a bee on the spider’s web. If human skin would be able to produce this thread, would we be protected from bullets? Together with the Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands Jalila Essaïdi takes the acid test: by implanting transgenic spider silk in the human skin and letting a bullet do its work.

With this work Essaïdi wants to show that safety in its broadest sense is a relative concept, and hence the term bulletproof. The work did stop some bullets but not those at full speed. With a “bulletproof skin” pierced by bullets the experiment leads to the conversation about how which forms of safety would benefit society.