Death 2.1

Tuesday, June 05, 2007 9:00 AM

Posted by Jonathan Danylko | Tag: Opinion | Comments: 1 | View blog reactions

Scientists are creating new types of creatures? Are we prepared for this?

I'm taking a little tangent this morning to discuss an article I recently read last week . After reading the Newsweek article about Life 2.0, I knew I had to write something about this type of science technology.

Anyone who knows me, know that I love technology. It's my life. Using technology to save a life is even more rewarding. But using technology to create life?

The topic of the article is about scientists using a synthetic DNA to develop a "newly created breed" that no human has ever seen before.

Let me repeat that.

The topic of the article is about scientists using a synthetic DNA to develop a "newly created breed" that no human has ever seen before.

Does this alarm anyone else?

Stranger than fiction?

There were a couple of statements and quotes from the article that made me sit up and take notice:

Despite the opposition, the researchers who work in the field, which is known as Synthetic Biology, have a disarming casualness about their work—almost as though they were building machines, rather than living things.

When it comes to experiments at this level, I would believe that most scientists involved would show a certain arrogance when it came to a project of this magnitude. I'm sure one or more scientists had to see Jurassic Park. They HAD to. Personally, I think they need to watch it again before carrying on with this type of experiment.

As the character Dr. Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." Stranger than fiction, indeed.

Now I know they're not recreating dinosaurs or anything, but it is amazing how technology can change things in the blink of an eye. As they stated in Jurassic Park, "Life somehow finds a way."

It's not perfect. Rewrite it!

Another statement in the article was by Tom Knight, a scientist at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who made the comment:

The genetic code is 3.6 billion years old. It's time for a rewrite.

Let me put this into programming terms since they are thinking of a creature as a "program." So, you're saying that if I wrote an outstanding program that sold for a lot of money and is still working today, with no problems and no issues, I should start rewriting it? Hmmm...Ummm....No. Leave the code alone.

Here's another scenario: What would happen if a virus or disease was introduced into this creature? Would it adapt to the disease and have a side effect altogether?

As a programmer, you can't account for everything that is going to happen. Trust me! If you prepare for a hurricane, a tornado will appear. If you prepare for a hurricane and tornado, frogs will fall from the sky. A little extreme, but you get my point. I doubt the scientists are medical wizards where they can account for all of the diseases introduced to a human body, let alone a new creature that we have never seen before.

Even Mr. and Mrs. Bill Gates are getting into the act. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation assisted this project by funding an initial $42 million. Interesting.

Another note of interest was the public voting on the right hand side of the article. At the time of this writing, 45% said that it is a good idea to let scientists create life in the laboratory, 45% were against it, and 10% were not sure.

Overall, I'm not too thrilled with the way scientists are looking at this as a "casual" experiment or the delusion that man can be "programmed" or built. I agree to a point, but as man has evolved over the years and continues to evolve, we don't need any extra pushes to further our demise. Man is going to be the death of us yet. Sheesh.

I'm interested in hearing some of your comments below.

Technorati Tags: Technology, Opinion, Life 2.0, Technology

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