Newsburst: Bioengineers Advance Synthetic Life

A team of American scientists, led by Dr. Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute in Maryland and California, have successfully developed the first synthetic “living” cell, and have set what many are calling a “scientific landmark”.

By injecting what the scientists referred to as synthetic “software” into a host cell, the cell’s qualities take on the role of whatever the software is commanding. Because the cell is self-replicating copies are innumerable; eventually becoming programmable bacteria. The bacteria can be programmed to suck Carbon Dioxide from our air, or to turn into a biological agent to be used in a bomb. It could be fashioned to become fuel, and we can imagine that it won’t take long before they formulate cancer-cell seeking creatures.   

As expected, the news immediately released a backlash from the “bioethics” community, and rightfully so. Not for any reason that “ethics” can even come into play – it shouldn’t be about duelling morality, but about the many instances where we’ve seen scientific means used to quell natural problems fail miserably.

France once introduced foreign plants called Spartina Alterniflora to strengthen their shorelines and protect them from erosion, only to see them flourish to an unmanageable amount. The plants decimated the marine life, and they have been struggling to find a solution to the problem ever since. Many people have a valid argument against vaccinations, for the fear that injecting our children with Polio does nothing more than keep Polio around, and those vaccines that contain mercury, and its potential relation to Autism. There’s the Cane Toad in Australia, and the Tall Fescue. The introduction of invasive species was never the intention. But the intentional introduction of invasive species is exactly the end result.   

Have scientists taken one step closer to inventing computerized worker bugs, or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster? The answer to that is yet to be realized. In the meantime, we should probably demand the invention of the Off switch.