Artificial Life May Be Possible Within Ten Years

CapedOpossum writes "According to an article from a few weeks back on CNN, researchers in the field of genetics and biology think that we may be able to artificially create life within the next decade. From the article: 'Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer. Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of 'wet artificial life. "It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could run amok, but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.'"

Comments

Re:It's Alive!

[wizardforce]

I shudder to think that an already overcrowded planet has to make more room for "fake babies".

notice that problem wasn't caused by the creation of artificial life, it is a sad consequence of ancient cultures not adapting to technology that increases the human life span. many cultures adapted to the unfortunate fact that to keep populations stable one might need to have twice as many kids as there were parents. once technology eliminated alot of childhood diseases the birthrates that sustained humanity before now caused an unsustainable boom in population growth.

the potential for anarchy is more than a slight worry for me, being that even if you could replicate the inner-workings of life, it doesn't mean you can give it a "soul".

I hear that argument a lot, that just because we could understand the entirety of human biology that we somehow wouldn't understand what makes us human, usually the view is that something supernatural governs the soul; although that fails to take into account environmental factors- tumors and brain damage for example can permanently alter personality, there are cases for example like phineas gage where permanent alterations in who he was occured. the man was never the same after that accident, you could say his soul was never the same. damage to the amygdala can cause alterations to emotional states, drugs can permanently alter emotional states as well.

our streets are filled with wandering empty shells with no knowledge of "right" and "wrong". Just because science "can do it" doesn't always mean it "should do it".

interesting you mention that, another view commonly held that our society is "degrading" from the "good old days" when most peopel don't realize how violent and utterly appalling most of human history was. what exactly do you think we are degrading from? we dont burn people at the stake like was a common punishment in the past, we dont stone people to death [in most countries] we dont enslave entire swaths of people on the basis of how much melanin was in their skin or destroy entire civilizations [mayan aztec] with diseases and war; Cortez for example is responsible in part for a civilization of 25 million being wiped out in south america. If anything society is getting less violent and more civilized as technology advances. I think that people should really start thinking for themselves what makes us human and do some research on human history so that we do not reverty back to such violence.

Re:It's Alive!

[Joe Tie.]

People said, to the word, the exact same thing about babies born from IVF therapy. Do you think they're soulless automatons too? Should we, perhaps, go kill them all for the greater good of our super-moral "normals"? Don't you see just a bit of irony in your denial to give something a chance at life, partially from revulsion over it being different, in terms of reasoning from your own position of moral superiority?

Re:Woo Hoo!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It should be an interesting test. If the ID crowd are sincere in their claim that the Desginer doesn't have to be divine, they'll be delighted. If, on the other hand, they're really just a bunch of religious fanatics, they'll be appalled. (I know which way I'm betting.)

Evaluate the claims by looking at the company

[wintermute42]

I've been to Venice, Italy once for six days. I still dream of going back. Venice is one of the great jewels of humanity, a place like no other. Assuming that the Italian government and regulations didn't drive me crazy, I'd love to love in Venice.

This train of through seems to have been the logic behind ProtoLife. The company has been founded and run by a group of Americans without any particular experience in molecular biology or any other kind of biology. The closest they seem to get is an organic chemist. The whole motivo esistere (reason to exist) seems to be "lets do something that sounds cool in the coolest city in the world". Given their backgrounds, I think that there are serious questions about whether some of the people involved have any real understanding of experimental method (and instrumenting a roulette wheel doesn't count), much less the "wet lab" work of biology.

In short, this is not a serious company and they don't deserve to have any claims they make taken seriously. If artificial life is created in ten years it seems very unlikely that this will have been done at ProtoLife.

In theory this is a start-up company that is supposed to have some prospect of making money. Artificial life, which really amounts to assembling pieces (enzymes and organelles from cells, along with selected genes). This doesn't mean that the assembled organism is of any use from a commercial stand point. This just reinforced the idea that this company is nothing more than a hobby.

Re:Seriously

[asolipsist]

Apparently not too hard; you only took 9 months of development.

That's only 9 months of manufacturing, it took over a billion years of R&D to flesh out the design.

Re:Seriously

[misanthrope101]

Evolutionary theory doesn't say that humans "just randomly formed." Creationist caricatures of Darwinism bear little resemblance to actual evolutionary theory.

That's part of the reason it's so hard to have a debate on the subject. It's difficult to even get to the subject, because you have to wade through so many absurd assumptions about what evolution is (meaning--what the scientific theory is) before you can argue about whether it's right or wrong. Usually we never get to that point, because people don't want to give up their cherished illusions that Darwinism is best summed up by stuff like "Frog+time=prince."

It would be like me arguing against voting Republican because they eat babies. They don't eat babies, but if I couldn't give up that caricature, we could never get to the point of talking about their actual platform or policies.