DARPA Aims for Synthetic Life With a Kill Switch

jkinney3 writes to mention that DARPA's mad scientists have undertaken a new program designed to create synthetic organisms, complete with a "kill switch." The project, dubbed BioDesign, is dumping $6 million into "removing the randomness of evolutionary advancement" by creating genetically engineered masterpieces. "Of course, Darpa's got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they'll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create 'tamper proof' cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, 'similar to a serial number on a handgun.' And if that doesn't work, don't worry. In case Darpa's plan somehow goes horribly awry, they're also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch."

Comments

Re:Does your tax money go where you want?

[interkin3tic]

Before the government got involved, health care in the US was affordable to even the poor.

There were also some advances in medicine in the meanwhile that raised the price independent of government involvement. Chemotherapy back in the day may have been cheap enough to afford out of pocket, but that's because it was booze.

I guess you could still claim that since the government funded much of the research that led to these advances, they were still responsible though.