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

Luckily...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

History has no evidence of any organism managing to evolve away from a lethal or maladaptive feature. The killswitch should persist in the population indefinitely.

It is the responsible thing to do

[amliebsch]

Putting aside the sarcasm, any self-replicating technology, or technology that could be self-replicating, needs to have multiple safeguards in place to prevent over-replication. Unless you are willing to declare any such research absolutely off limits and enforce it somehow, then I think they should be credited with doing the right thing here.

Re:Does your tax money go where you want?

[Wyatt Earp]

You realize that without DARPA you'd not be whining about defense spending on the Internet, right?

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.

Re:Does your tax money go where you want?

[Red Flayer]

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

[citation needed]

There's a reason Medicare and Medicaid exist, and it's precisely because the poor *could NOT* afford health care.

The idiots who look at the past through rose-colored glasses really piss me off -- there were no "good old days". The government programs we have today were largely the result of a problem needing to be addressed. What, you think that the magical budget fairy appeared and said, "Hey everybody! Let's give money for health care to people who can already afford it!"

There is something supremely retarded about you kids. You see government fail miserably at almost everything it does, yet you somehow believe the solution is more government control.

And there is something fundamentally retarded about someone who believes that an unregulated system would result in a better outcome. Newsflash, retard -- when entities are allowed to act completely in their own self-interest, they do so, to the detriment of others. The insurance industry is a private tax on health care (a portion of everything lines someone's pockets). Why shouldn't the beneficiary be the general public (via a federal system) instead of a small group of extremely wealthy people?