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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.
I missed this news but read about the microscope that can image down to half the diameter of a hydrogen atom. And years ago I read about using such microscopes and other nano-technology to manipulate single atoms into place with other atoms==meaning place them where their chemical/physical properties would set up reactions including the building of custom molecules.
So–yes, we are on the verge of custom building whatever we want including life of any description==not by swirling thins around in a flask with random bolts of lightning==but by having a blueprint and building it piece by piece.
Only a complete lack of knowledge makes this interesting at all. No–wait—-yea, its still interesting===the knowledge of man being built piece by piece, the babble of god being deconstructed piece by piece.
Course, it doesn’t matter what dogma of religion is struck down, it will change and adapt to remain on top until that very attribute is engineered out of our genome. Maybe thats the news?
Philip K Dicks premonitions strike again. So lets get the ethical debate going right now. What happens when some geneticists makes what appears to be a human from scratch? Is it human? Or is it a robot?
The only real downside to this kind of information is that whomever starts making more complex life will pattern it after what we already have in nature.
In the end it is only tinkering with the present source materials.
Until they can create they own atoms (not use the ones drifting about) and construct things, they still have not made original new life.
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#2
This is why I have been talking to people since the first hints of AI that we need legislation that defines and safeguards the rights of such people. Whether they are organic or inorganic.
Eventually we will have the first stages of thinking robots and full blown clones. They will need rights in the world or else we will have a new fight over abolition.
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#4 – Asimov is ahead of you in line.
#3–Cursor==thanks for seeing the need to move the goal posts right off the bat.
Instead of “Science can’t create life”, in view of the obvious that we are only short steps away from doing just that, you change the fortress dogma to “Science cant create matter.” I assume some day that “could” be done==energy into matter although we are still mainly working the equation the other way around.
Then the claim will be “Science can’t create energy–so god did.”
Smooth move?—not this time.
I hope this works. Down the road I sure would love to make a better me from scratch!
“The controversy only lives in the minds of those who fear science.”
So all religion is bad, and all science is good even when it creates the possibility for our own destruction…
Yes, I for one, am so glad we have Chemical, Biological and Nuclear weapons. And now we’ll have artificial life offering the newest possibility for destruction. It’s not Science I fear, but those who bow to the religion of science and hold it as the great savior without questioning its application.
#8–Benji–you’ve got it half right.
Yes, all religion is bad except when it acts to bring comfort to man, which it does so little of, that would be an unfair label to put on it.
And, NO, science is neither good or bad–just a tool for finding the truth of the universe. Too bad institutions like religion can use this tool for its evil ends.
He has not created life! He simply resequenced some DNA and put it in a living cell to take over its function , that is not creating life. When he constructs a complete cell from scratch and then brings it to life and it reproduces he has the created life till then blame the press for sensationalizing a simple science story
#6,
Not only that, he has already failed. Particle physicists have been creating non-baryonic matter (classes of matter that have not existed before) for almost a decade now. Granted they do it in diminishingly small quantities. Note, I am not talking about the artificial elements they manage to create every now and then, or anti-matter, but actual new classes of matter which (AFAIK) do not exist outside the laboratory anywhere else in the universe for any amount of time.
His ilk had the same thing to say a few years ago when the biologists made a totally artificial polio virus. They said that the scientists would never manage to make a “new” organism from scratch.
The media ignores the ectogenesis research, but the per-term and post-fertilization research are only about a month apart for human sized mammals. At some point in the next decade those two branches of research will meet, and perhaps cross boundaries, meaning we are entering an age where perhaps the sperm, egg and even uterus become superfluous to reproduction.
#4 – Sounds like somebody read The Age Of Spiritual Machines.
It is disappointing that in the 21st Century we have to have fearful headlines about “playing God.” Obviously this is important technology and properly leveraged, it can lead to breakthroughs and technologies that will have us fix what we’ve broken on our planet.
#10,
He was using a preexisting cell because it was easy and handy. Other research has already taken pre-existing genetic sequences, and put it in an artifical cell.
It is only a matter of time before those two techniques meet.
Boring…
#3 and #10 are correct. What has been done here is akin to reshuffling several decks of playing cards to create a new deck.
The correct headline should be, “U.S Citizens Have Junior High Science Comprehension.”
#12
This is definitely a huge milestone on the way to the singularity. (AKA the Nerd Rapture)
#12
I say let the planet fix itself… of course we will probably all die in the process, but that’s how these kinds of things go.
#10 is right. This is light-years away from creating even a single cell capable of surviving and reproducing outside the lab. It’s really just tinkering with existing organisms.
The press loves to run stories about “playing God”, but that expression has no definition. It’s like saying “life is sacred”, which also means precisely nothing. This language is used to express (or incite) fear and anger, not convey information or ideas.
No one is “playing” at anything here – this is serious stuff.
Time pulled this shit with the OJ trial. On the front of TIME, they had his mug shot and edited it with photoshop to make him look darker and scarier. They had to apologize.
As for the news. This is cool. Too bad about the media bringing the magical god into it. He should grow a baby monkey.
As long as it has limited emotional response and a (max.) 4-year lifespan, I don’t see the problem.
#17 – This is light-years away from creating even a single cell capable of surviving and reproducing outside the lab.
If by light years you mean within a decade. Money and manpower are the only obstacles.
EIDEARD–thanks for the continuous excellent posts==but do you have to pimp the dear souls who put emphasis on your captions rather than on what the articles actually say?
Some of these dolts can’t read past the 14 point type. Don’t know if it is religion that has rotted their brains, or just poor eyesight.
#14, johnjohns,
Congratulations! You have received the coveted BubbaRayDipDork award!
“The methods described here will be generally useful for constructing large DNA molecules from chemically synthesized pieces and also from combinations of natural and synthetic DNA segments.”
Why reinvent the wheel when unnecessary? Must we reinvent arithmetic each time a new string theory is proposed?
#9 –
You’re confusing science with the scientific method. And religion with the practice of religion.
More correctly, the scientific method is a tool for finding truth in the universe. Science is the application of the discoveries made using the scientific method. Therefore, science can be and is bad when the application is used for bad purposes.
Religion itself is neither good nor bad. It is just a way of describing the relationship between humans and the divine. The practice of religious precepts, however, can lead to bad or good.
This is fasciating. From a scientific standpoint we are bridging two major sciences Biology and Chemistry.
Its the heirarchy of science:
Humanities must be understood in sociological terms. Sociology must be understood in Psychological terms.
Psychology must be understood in Biological terms.
Biology must be understood in Chemistry terms.
Chemistry must become a branch of Physics.
Physics must eventually be explained mathematically.
There are gaps in our knowledge at every level. It is very exciting when we see these gaps filled in.
I like the picture..
0.Eideard. “The controversy only lives in the minds of those who fear science.”
Like Hiroshima bomb survivors.
RBG
#20, you may be right, but I think it depends on the definitions of “create” and “new”. Creating a “new” organism that turns out to be viable – by combining pieces of existing organisms – doesn’t feel like “creation” to me.
I’m not an auto mechanic – but I could conceiveably hack together some sort of crude vehicle from parts of other cars… not quite what real engineers do.
#24–Benji==your distinction is mostly correct, but makes little difference?
This doesn’t help, but I’ll say it anyway==what is “responsible” when science creates a nuke and a religious nutcase uses it to blow up a country of infidels, or themselves to help god along with the rapture? I wish the answer was religion==but it is in fact, both under the “but for” rule. But under the “last proximate cause” rule, then only the religious nut case is responsible.
Doing the math, that means religious nut cases will be 75% responsible for the end of human life on earth, should it end that way.
#28, jim h, I think your analogy isn’t accurate. The DNA molecules were chemically synthesized. A closer analogy would be more like your engineer using raw materials to create a new and unique car engine.
Bearded bald men are hot.