Scientists create flu virus entirely from genes

At a conference today, scientists from the University of Wisconsin revealed that they have managed to create influenza A virii entirely through the manipulation. Doesn't sound cool enough? If you can create a virus entirely from genes, we're a short step away from being able to insert mutagens into viruses and using them to fight cancer and such-something that people have been working on for quite sometime now.

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Fiction, Reality, Dodging Bullets

[Chris Burke]

A popular theme in sci-fi is that the unrestricted development of technology without thought for wheather such technology _should_ be developed can lead to disastrous consequences. From Twelve Monkeys to (personal fav) On the Shore, the literary concensus is that technology is dangerous and must be treated as such.

The scientific community, for it's part, seems to blithely ignore this except for when popular opinion could threaten their funding (it _is_ only fiction after all). They only mention the positive aspects of what they are doing. Wheather it is a front, or researchers really believe their discoveries could never be used for evil I don't know (though the cynic in me suspects the former). Still, they continue to ignore the morals of fiction.

The problem is that the literary tales of technologicaly-induced doomsday have a basis in reality. When we let the nuclear djinni out of the bottle, the human race held for the first time the very real potential of self-annihilation. The horror scenario never occured, but it came damn close. Now we seem to be largely out of the danger zone. We dodged that bullet, but that's exactly what it was -- dodging a bullet.

Now we have (will have) geneticaly engineered virii, and nanobots. Both of these things have the potential for great good (like nuclear power), but also that potential for ruin. Ruin based on the literary cliches (again based soundly in fact) that Accidents(mutations) Happen, and Evil(stupid) People Happen. Hopefully, we can dodge these bullets as well, and reap the benefits.

The question is, after virii and nanobots, what will be the next technology that could save or damn us all? How many bullets can we dodge?