Craig Venter's Synthetic Cell; First Shot Of Biological War Upon All Natural Life ?
May 21, 2010 10:02 AM EDT (Updated: May 21, 2010 10:10 AM EDT)
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The biologist who mapped the human genome, Dr. Craig Venter, has announced he has now created a synthetic cell aka synthetic life. The new Ventor project transferred D.N.A. built from chemicals into a cell and mitosis (cell division) occurred. The plans for the D.N.A. were taken from a natural organism so it is a little less than making a new life form with a human design such as a living tyrannosaurus with some of George Washington’s facial features, or a tiny flesh-eating mosquito, yet the premise was demonstrated that the capability exists.
Dr. Venter and company plan to manufacture synthetic life forms in order to stimulate the economy, or find health solutions. I have a few comments.
Human society has a wild element. A thief recently stole five paintings valued between 100 and 600 million dollars from the Paris Museum of Modern Art. The paintings may be eventually a hedge against the collapse of civilization. Collectors in a post-apocalyptic world might value them quite highly. The Picasso, Matisse and other paintings in the collection may in the future be more valuable than gold. The end of civilization may develop through several channels including perhaps, synthetic life forms and synthetic viruses.
The scientific effort to understand life, and all of nature is commendable, yet the knowledge gained may be quite dangerous, and better left as knowledge rather than downloaded into a compulsory use category. Life took at least several days/eras/billions of years of time literal values to develop. Human society has existed in a civilized form just about 6000 years. It is rash to just create synthetic life and use it for economic or any other purposes as if human capacity to contain technology from oil spills to nuclear radiation is fool-proof. Let’s (humanity) study synthetic life issues for 5000 years—just a fraction even of the time life has been on Earth, and then consider the question again.
The usual excuse for playing God with nature is that it has positive economic benefits. Using economics as a justification to overcome moral objections is a bad rationale. It is an amoral compulsion consistent more with primitive life than philosophically mature life forms such as human beings occasionally try to be.
There are an infinite number of solutions to social economic challenges given existing materials that do not require the creation of synthetic life forms to fully satisfy human needs on Earth. The problem with human economics are in greed, unintelligent use of resources, failure to develop ecological economic policy and no plans to develop an exo-biological containment facility in the moon for returning astronauts from Mars and for Dr. Venter’s synthetic life forms.
Synthetic life—altered D.N.A. of biological organisms, present innumerable hypothetical problems of containment of new life forms and for survival of existing species. Creation of synthetic life except for research modeling perhaps is a reckless use of new science akin to letting every kid have a tabletop fusion kit so he can make fusion-powered rockets to visit other planets—such a power would be explosive.
In this universe, the 13.7 billion year evolution of intelligent life—and perhaps more time than we know with another sort of time-space precursor of this universe including the modge panc (mind plans) of God, has brought into being a synthetic, adaptive union of mind with inanimate materials existing uncertainly with a substratum of quantum wave-particles of an uncertain deep field nature. It is truly reckless beyond reason to alter the evolving life forms of given natural species and mutate beyond recognition theoretically, the phenomenal order of being that might eventually be deeply comprehended by the beings living within it.
The creation of synthetic life forms for war and peace, sales in Jiffy-Marts and marketed on Wall-Street is an epiphenomenal bit of idiocy that would make a kaleidoscope of living organisms for immediate, proximal economic value.
Perhaps some scientific sentiment exists to create a Frankenstein Supremacy Species better than science fiction has ever conceived before. Maybe Sigourney Weaver’s challenges in the Alien movie series are a little shopworn now and require spicing up with flesh eating synthetic life hungering for politicians in the District of Columbia (I don’t intend to inadvertently give support Dr. Venter’s plan), yet what needs to be done is passage of a law by congress directly making creation of synthetic life forms illegal in the United States of America.
The creation of synthetic life is a form of biological war upon all naturally evolved species that should be outlawed. With computer modeling of D.N.A. elements it may be possible to learn much from about the synthetic, hypothetical form of various creatures without making any. Slavery, cannibalism and other bad human practices required thousands of years to eliminate from human society, now is not the time-nor ever should it be, to dump creation of a Pandora’s box of new biological ways of exploiting life, endangering life, and dehumanizing anything so that the corrupt and unconscionable may have advantage socially over others. Such practices deserve war upon them rather than support. Breaking the boundaries of reason, justice and civility should be discouraged rather than tossed into the stew pot of corporate progress.
When the civilization collapses and the economic consumption patterns of today are history, we don’t want a plethora of synthetic life forms running loose to serve remaining humans up for dinner because there are no PhDs in biology around to war upon them.
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