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Time’s piece was accompanied by a foreboding picture of Venter in a forest, wearing a dark coat and scarf, his beard giving his scowl a particularly dire look. The picture matched the story’s ominous mood: “He has gone beyond merely sequencing a genome and has designed and built one. In other words, he may have created life,” the article intoned. The Economist promised that when Venter is done, he will “have erased one of the last mythic distinctions in science — that between living and non-living matter.”
I get the impression that I am supposed to be tingling, my heart racing with exaltation or terror or … something. And yet I feel like I have a lesion in my amygdala, unable to respond to the threat of an electric shock. In some ways, this is actually old news. And in other ways, it’s news that hasn’t yet been written, and won’t be for decades…
But what does doing this really signify? What does it teach us about life that we didn’t know before? There was indeed a time when scientists believed there was something fundamentally different about living matter and nonliving matter.
It’s called the Middle Ages.
Pretty much all the headlines ran with the God story. Fear and excitement – and controversy.
The controversy only lives in the minds of those who fear science.
#30 Jim R
The abstract says
“This synthetic genome, named M. genitalium JCVI-1.0, contains all the genes of wild-type M. genitalium G37 except MG408, which was disrupted by an antibiotic marker…”
and
“To identify the genome as synthetic, we inserted “watermarks” at intergenic sites…”
I don’t pretend to understand even the abstract, but if I try to filter out the “how” from the “what”, it seems they basically customized an existing DNA to some extent and ended up with something that’s still viable, and possibly more useful.
Angel you horny bastard!
Actually Jim, we’re both wrong. I did a little extra reading and they chemically synthesized nucleic acids recreate the genome of “wild-type M. genitalium G37”. So they didn’t use the parts of other “cars”- they started with raw materials. On the other hand they didn’t create a “new engine” either (my bad), but I would say they recreated life. 🙂
#8..Benji….I agree with you on this. It’s not through ignorance or religion that people sometimes fear science, but fear it because of how science is used many times.
And #10…bobbo, I think your wrong, science can be good or bad, or at least the reasons for a particular science can be.
Looking around us at the world today, and thinking how much could be improved by this or that scientific advancement is a good thing, but as has happened in the past, many very bad things have been done in the name of science that have been very harmful to the planet and it’s inhabitants.
It all comes down to who do you or can you trust to do the right thing with these kinds of scientific advances. The record(especially in the last 30 years) isn’t very good, that this won’t be used and abused. It will be made to sound like a humanitrian thing, but be strictly for money or power. We see a small scale of whats ahead in the controversy over stem cell research today. Those who wish to make large fortunes back unlimited and unrestrained research, others feel that limit’s must be placed on just how far we can or should go, at least for the near future. Both sides promise some sort of medical utopia, that so far, only one side is delivering.
Who’s right?
#17
By light-years, do you mean we will need to travel to another galaxy to be able to create living organisms from scratch?
So it takes for very smart people an incredible amount of hard work to create life.
Isn’t that the Intelligent Design position?
IF we DONT want to fix it, LETs make a NEW version, and COPYRIGHT IT…
NEw COW, $10,000,000
NEw bird, $1,000,000
NEW you, Priceless…
#29 – Bobo
It’s impossible, then, for an atheist nutcase to end the world? I find that to be an interesting statement. What about that guy Stalin whose atheist government was responsible for killing more people in the 20th century than any other? All in the religious pursuit of non-religion.
I like how a team of brilliant geneticists labor tirelessly to advance science and accomplish something that the actual scientific community agrees is at least noteworthy (and then proceed to argue about), but once it hits the web, the armchair Einsteins inevitably come out of the woodwork with “BORING” or, even worse, horrifically inacurate musings on enormously complex topics like quantum physics and organic chemistry.
I guess its a direct result of web forums being populated primarily by college students who think they know it all, and people with lots of time to post from their basement bunkers. My excuse? Lunch break. Bye!
#39 – Benji,
Really well said, but expect your statement to have little impact. Web discourse is increasingly the exlusive playground of various hiveminds.
I find it interesting, as an atheist myself, that I spend a lot of time defending the concept of religion against ignorant bigots who, ironically, want “all religion abolished” because religion is, well, ignorant and bigoted.
I submit to most of these “atheists” who turn every single story and event into a soapbox, that you are, in fact, simply adhering to an anti-religion. In essence, you likely have far more in common with the religious folks you despise than you think – you just place your blind faith in a different source, but you still let it totally inform your ideology.
It seems that genuine free thinkers (be they religious or atheist), who are skeptical by nature, objective, inquisitive, and open to learning rather than simply shouting to the choir and assuming their knowledge of “all things” is complete, are in increasingly short supply. Or perhaps always have been…
#39–Benji==well who is it now—repeat for emphasis===NOW that wants to see the world end in Nuclear holocaust?
Besides the nutbag neo-con chickenhawk industrialists, only the nutbag born again rapture seeking fundies, and the nutbag muslim fanatics seeking 72 virgins. Nice group there.
No atheists.
Stalins dead.
Other than being totally irrelevant, good post.