Scientists Attempting to Create Simple Life Form

derubergeek writes "The Washington Post is reporting on an apparently credible project to create a simple life form in a petri dish. The goal is two-fold: 1) to actually create a unique life form essentially from scratch and (more importantly) 2) to extensively analyze and model the entire biology of this critter. Exciting and scary at the same time. From the article, it sounds as if they are quite wary of their project and fascinated at the same time. I usually refer to that sensation as 'That little voice that I should have listened to...'" There's also a NY Times article.

Comments

Is it actually creating life though?

[Helmholtz Coil]

When I read the headline this morning I thought it was going to be entirely from scratch, but the article says that they're "just" (like it's not still amazing we can do this) going to take an existing organism, and strip it of most of its DNA until they get down to the bare minimum required to sustain life. So I don't know if I'd necessarily call it "creating" life, because it seems to be more of the same modifying existing life people have been doing for a while now.

Aaargh

[Daniel Dvorkin]

From the article:

The project raises philosophical, ethical and practical questions. For instance, if a man-made organism proved able to survive and reproduce only under a narrow range of laboratory conditions, could it really be considered life? More broadly, do scientists have any moral right to create new organisms?

Why the hell not? I am so fucking sick of people invoking morality (or "ethics;" IMO it's a distinction without a difference, but that's a whole 'nother argument) as an argument against biological research. No one ever brings these arguments up in chemistry, or physics, or math -- despite the demonstrated ability of, e.g., a bunch of physicists working with a few chemists and mathematicians to come up with a device that can fry an entire city in a fraction of a second. But when it comes to biology, people get squeamish because ... well, because we've had the idea implanted in our heads, at least since Frankenstein, that cutting-edge biological research is somehow "playing God." Any time you hear anyone saying there are "ethical concerns" with biological research, that's what they're talking about, even if they're too mealy-mouthed to admit it.

Frankenstein was a story. It was fiction. And so was Jurassic Park, and so was Gattaca. I won't comment on the Bible here, although my view of that book is probably pretty clear from the context ... And none of it, none of it, justifies putting up roadblocks to research that will, almost certainly, in the not-too-distant future, save lives.

Re:Aaargh

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Okay, fair enough; Einstein had serious doubts about the morality of atomic weapons -- and so did Oppenheimer, who had a lot more to do with the actual building of the bomb than Einstein did. But those were moral doubts about the applications of the science, not the research itself. No one told Fermi, when he was building his first atomic pile, that he must stop immediately because There Are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

Re:Aaargh

[CommieLib]

I think that there's pretty much a consensus that the world would be a better place if nuclear weapons had never existed. A bell, of course, cannot be unrung.

What Bible-thumpers like myself contend is that man's ability to create often outpaces man's wisdom to use. Do you can consider that a controversial argument? I think that the "creation" (not really a creation, more like stripping the engine and transmission out of a car and replacing them) is the first step into creating an unimaginably powerful force. Whether that force will be for good or evil is yet to be seen.

Simply because one can make the case that a force can save lives does not automatically trump any force for evil it may introduce concomitantly. See Edward Teller...

Anyhow, at this point, it's way too late to have this debate. The genie is already out of the bottle, and now we have to ensure that the good guys stay ahead of the bad guys in this race.

Re:Aaargh

[HalfFlat]

We should never justify killing new lives as "saving lives". That's just backwards.

No, it's just hard and uncomfortable.

Hopefully such a hypothetical situation will never arise, but what if the only feasible way to save 500 people was to sacrifice 100? (The recent hostage situation in Moscow comes to mind, but it's far from clear that the use of gas was in fact the only feasible way, or that the hostages were otherwise sure to die.) What if the only way to save 2 lives were to sacrifice one? What if the one was a friend, and the two were strangers?

And then there is the question of life. All life is not regarded morally equal, for we have little qualms in eating vegetables, and even have even less care for the millions and millions of minute organisms that die through our action or inaction every day. What makes a life valuable? It's a hard question, and not simply solved by saying that it's "human" or not. What is so special about a bunch of genes by themsleves?

These questions are hard, as demonstrated by the lack of widely accepted answers. Blanket dismissals though just hide the problem. If the problem is not confronted, then we may be acting in ways that we would regard as morally wrong if we later viewed them in a rational light. In that sense, not thinking about these problems can itself be regarded as amoral.

Re:Aaargh

[Jonathan]

Yes, and because of the Computer Science orientation of most /. readers, they know that some professor's AI project is not going to take control of the nuclear arsenal of the US ala Terminator's Skynet. They understand that such scenarios are just fantasy. And yet similar paranoia applied to a field they don't know that much about is treated like a realistic worry. It's funny, really.

Re:Have they not seen Wierd Science

[Bonker]

First thing that popped into my head when I read this was the Oingo-Boingo 'Weird Science' theme. Dates me pretty soundly, I guess.

This here is the time to start thinking about everything science fiction has ever told us when dealing with artificaial life. It's one of the few sub-genres of science fiction that's almost always cautionary... from 'Frankenstein'--

"FIRST POST... BAAAAD!!"

--to 'Species'--

"That hole in his back makes him look just like the goatse.cx guy... except it's because his spine was torn out."

Man will create life. There's no doubt about it. It's a given. Eventually, we'll no doubt even create life that looks, acts, and feels human. What we should never forget, however, is that we are stepping into territory where angels fear to tread and should take each action with only after gut-wrenching, soul-searching thought.

Is it resonsible, moral, or ethical to create life when the planet is as overcrowded as it is?

Is it ethical to create life that can feel, think, or be hurt when you *know* we're going to dissect and vivisect of what we create?

Is it ethical or responsible to create life, when we know that we're already making serious mistakes in genetic engineering, such as the genes that recently jumped between soya and corn?

This is a wonderful new field of science that has incredible potential for human advancement. It also has incredible potential for misuse and unethical behavior.

Re:News: Two famous scientists found dead

[Daniel Dvorkin]

No, you're the only one to whom it seems incredibly foolish. Well, okay, you and a bunch of other fools.

As I said in another post, no one raises these objections with physics, or chemistry, or math, despite things like, oh, say, the atomic bomb. All scientific research is potentially dangerous. But stopping research because of some vague fear, or some pseudo-philosophical-religious claptrap like "some things are better off left alone" (what things exactly? Be specific) would leave us in the Dark Ages.

Jellyfish don't do scientific research. No jellyfish has ever built an atomic bomb, or engineered a dangerous virus, true. But would you rather be a jellyfish, or a human being?

Re:What's so scary?

[Total_Wimp]

Star Thistle is commonly found in California fields only it's not native and it wasn't put there on purpose. It has displaced the local grasses almost completely in some areas. This is only one of thousands of examples of non-native species that have infested new (to them) environments.

All environments will be new to this critter. That makes the "scary" part, to me anyway, the fact that if this were to escape and survive it would displace something else with absolutely unknown consequences. We are completely dependant on our environment's biology for breathable air and edible food so it's pretty damn important that we don't accidentally (no one would even _consider_ doing it purposely, would they?) introduce some species that will screw it up.

I'm not saying we shouldn't experiment. I'm just saying that everyone should have a healthy dose of fear over this particular kind of experiment.

TW

Re:Hello...?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

There are two basic approaches to medical research. The first is the "shotgun" approach -- throw a bunch of chemicals at a disease and find one that stops the disease process without killing the patient. This approach has led to some great successes over the last century or so, but the problem is, as far as we can tell, we've just about discovered everything we're going to discover by this method. The easy stuff has been done.

The other approach, the molecular approach, is to figure out how life works -- and, of great interest from the medical applications point of view, how it goes wrong -- from the ground up, and try to use that knowledge to build new treatments. That's what these guys are doing. I can almost guarantee you that when a cure for cancer or AIDS is found, it will come from this approach.

Re:Have they not seen Wierd Science

[4of12]

Your caution is well advised.

If anything is obvious and plainly evident, it is that mankind has not done the most commendable job of managing the current set of life forms on planet earth.

"Be fruitful and multiply..." - check.
"Do not kill..." uhh...

If there are overly many human beings for our existing biosphere and too many of them are living unhappy lives, then producing other sentient life forms is not likely to improve things, unless they eat septic sludge and excrete something that counts as food to us.

Re:News: Two famous scientists found dead

[Yunzil]

We are meddling with forces we do not comprehend,

Yes. The technical name for such meddling is "science".

Re:It's Eviiill!

[Ektanoor]

It's an ethical problem. For very religious people such experiments would equal to the most arrogant attempt for humans recreating the Creation. Even if it is inside a lab, such event would leave a huge teological hole on one of the most canonical religious doctrines: that life is somehow "different" from other physical phenomena and could only be created in very exceptional circumstances by an omnipotent being.

Since the XIX century, we have seen how the crumbling of this "truth" is painfully received among several religions. Since Darwin and Pasteur, every step that closes nears the biotic and anabiotic world is not easy for believers. Many dogmas put living beings in a special place. Besides, humans are put in a more special place. However, the rising of Evolutionism blurred the human-living beings division. Meanwhile while we got closer and closer to the abiotic world, no one could ever mix up inorganic components and bring out an alien crawling outta the lab. So many creationists hang to this last frontier and consider it as "proof" that Life was created by someone. However the new experiments may blur this division to the impossible.

Re:Have they not seen Wierd Science

[Sj0]

Why do you assume that such life forms would be sentient? Just creating basic micro-organisms is an incredible challenge, and creating a basic micro-organism is what we're trying to do here. Making a sentient, multicellular organism is so far in our future compared to this experiment, it's incredible. It's like saying that Marie Curie was trying to build a cold fusion reactor.

I'm suprised and dissapointed at the number of kneejerk luddites in this thread who automatically make some magical connection between micro-organisms(ie. simple life, the kind which first formed several billion years ago), and human life(ie. complex life, the kind which formed several hundred million years ago), and therefore declare that all experiments of this type are dangerous. Creating simple life forms is merely a means to the end of learning more of our origins -- knowlege which is important in the grand scheme of our understanding of the universe.

Re:Get your own dirt!

[Sebastopol]

A joke, but typical of how religion deals with science: once science topples a divine bastion, religion is quick to come up with another one.

- First they promoted the flat earth

- Then they promoted the Terra-centric planetary system.

- Then they promoted the young earth theory.*

- Then they denied evolution.**

- Then they said only god could make life.

- Now they say only god can make dirt.

Religion will always be able to regroup and criticize, without offering anything other than mircales and mythology. Remember how the Democrats lost this mid-term, by criticizing with no real substance? So will science eventually obviate the need for all creationist religions by eventually leaving religion with so little ground to stand on, no one will take it's claims seriously!

As an athiest, and IMHO, the only "religions" science won't dismantle are the Theravada Buddhists and Confuscists, because they don't make such gross claims.

* (There's a childrens book for Christians that claims t-rex's teeth were used for cracking nuts, and that they got along with men before original sin.)

** (Of course, finches and antibiotics put this to rest. Fortunately the Roman Catholics were smart enough to reverse course up to this point, just look at rights of ordainment, revised in 1987.)

On playing God

[drew_kime]

But when it comes to biology, people get squeamish because ... well, because we've had the idea implanted in our heads, at least since Frankenstein, that cutting-edge biological research is somehow "playing God."

Actually, according to a Catholic theologian when asked about this, to "play God" you would have to invent the rules then sit back and watch what happens within the rules. What we do is try to figure out what the rules are and then do everything we can within them. So trying to create life within the rules that we've got is not "plyaing God" but "playing Man".