Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Poised to Create Life
Tim C writes "I was watching the 9 o'clock News on BBC1 here in the UK, and could hardly believe what I was seeing - a group of American scientists have apparently discovered what they believe to be the 300 or so genes that are all that is required to create a simple life-form - more details can be found on the BBC news website.
Somewhat reassuringly, they realise the potential impact of their work, and so are seeking the opinions of religious leaders before proceeding with the next stage of their research - actually attempting to create a living organism."
Just one week?
/. population is astounding. That one person can say, in the middle of this crowd, that 'man may make the vessel, but the soul of God's work', without rabid retribution from the rest - who've been born and raised on stories of aliens and AI... Wow!
Seven days?
Interesting. Did he rest on the seventh?
This is a truly amazing, fascinating topic. The scope of reactions across the
Maybe we are ready for this after all.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
That's a totally invalid argument.
'It might cause harm in the future, so we shouldn't mess with it'.
I can think of a thousand different ways in which the invention of the computer can, has, and might in the future cause harm. However, the computer has been -way- more productive than it has been destructive. Now, you might say 'how is creating life good?'. Well, I could make things up, but honestly, I don't know for certain what applications this might have. But, when they built the first computers, they really couldn't have envisioned the internet, ATMs, wordprocessors, photoshop, and all of the other wonderful aspects of computers that make our lives (in theory) easier.
Also, your argument implies that, by telling a couple of scientists not to study something, we'll be safe 'from the evil of creating life', or whatever. That's bullshit. Eventually, someone, somewhere, will figure this out, and will use it to create life. It's inevitable. People want to play god (I'd love to play god, that'd be fun as hell!). They'll do it with or without your permission. They'll do it with or without the governments permission. They'll just do it. By saying 'no' to these guys, you're just robbing a few honest scientists of a chance to research something they've discovered.
Finally, biology and ecology -is- just a simple engineering excercise. I think you'll agree with me that there is really nothing 'mystical' about mathematics, right? Machines do it, and do it far better than we can(ignoring higher level abstract mathematics). Well, consider - Descartes considered mathematics to be something that is uniquely human. He couldn't even remotely conceive of a machine to do math, and no other animal in the animal kingdom can do math. He used this as an argument in support of Dualism (the idea that there is the 'physical' brain, and then something beyond that, to account for consciousness and introspection).
Now you're saying (if I understand correctly) that biology/ecology is something 'mystical' that we shouldn't mess with. Well, same thing will happen to you, as happened to Descartes and hundreds/thousands of other people that said 'Science can't explain this , so science isn't the all-powerful belief-system you think it is!'. You'll be proven wrong.
So many people have tried this argument and i finnally have to respond. The difference is that these scientist are creating a new kinda of life, probably completely different from any other life on Earth. When you reproduce, all you are doing is creating another human, which is agruably just a detached extention of yourself. When you fertalize an egg, you are merging one cell with another, no creation there, just a remixing. the fact that this cell divides and becomes independant is irrelevant. The point is that it is not new, just an addition.
ummm, I just gotta say, that's damn funny... you need to keep that up, just so I can link to it in one of my .sigs....
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
The capatilists "live" off the backs of the third world nations b/c they are so bad off their even the sweatshop wages they pay are better then what they had before.
it's not charity but its better then nothing.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
i said that the simple bacteria created by these scientists would not decimate life on earth. they are taking the essential genes from a non-pathogenic bacteria. if the ability to decimate life on earth was an essential gene, do you think there would be life now?
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
even though it contains all of the genes required to live, this still does not mean that it will be better-suited or more efficient. the extra genes that organisms have add to their ability to adapt to new situations and environments, which make them more suited to live, and more efficient in certain environments.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
What an idiotic suggestion that religious leaders be asked for advice on this topic. They don't have the foggiest idea about the possibilities of this technology, nor on the impact that it could have on anything, not even on religion, because they are exactly like everyone else, ie. not clairvoyant. At best they'd be guessing, which doesn't give them any kind of privileged say whatsoever.
The only people that have any special platform in this subject area are the domain specialists. The rest of us are just handwaving. We should all have a say of course, but not from any privileged position.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Every story that involves genes and people ALWAYS has this pathetic PR bid on the religious community. Essentialy if you don't acknowledge their existance and importance to human civilization by giving them condescending explanations of your work for their blessing then expect all sorts of angry publicity and demonstrations.
Its a lot like opening a new business in small town, there are certain established public figures that you have to bribe to even get the business license. These being, in every case, useless people we can do without.
Allow me. :-)
Question 1: Why *DO* you believe in god?
I think this should be brought out:
"However, when they can create life and then tell me exactly what choices this creature will make during its life...then they'll be playing god."
Essantially, he is saying that being/playing God is not about creating, but about knowing. I'd like to hear some responses to this. Being an atheist myself, I can't really say.
Responding directly:
Unfortunatly for your argument, if we do create AI, then presumably we will have all the sourse code for it and will be able to predict its actions precisely. All you need is a slightly faster computer to tell you what the slightly slower one is about to think. (Naturally, for analog life, this is not true.)
I don't see any special about this vaporware from some guys promising to create some puny bacteria. Hey, my parents created me in nine months! And I have become a reasonably accomplished code-hacking life form. I don't depend on some lab assistant for my food :-)
However, I should point out that they did consult religious leaders beforehand.
What is it about issues like this that make people all religious? Not to insult any slashdot posters (they are obviously all saints who give away their incomes to the poor.) but why do people who aren't bothering to devote themselves to doing good willing to tell scientists what they can and can't do in the labratory.
I respect, even if I don't agree with, the objections of religious leaders. These are men and women who really have devouted their life to doing good. But it is the height of hypocrisy to say "you shouldn't do that" when I know full well that you earn a great deal above the mean income and are keeping most of that money to make yourself happy. And no helping out once in awhile at the local community center doesn't cut it.
I don't blame you, being good is very difficult (heck im not), and maybe you think that doing this might be wrong. So post that you think it might be wrong. But posting about how man has gone to far or other such dramatic statements is really kinda ridiculous when you fail to devote yourself to this good you apparently so strongly believe in.
ohh and I apoligize beforehand to that handful of peoplel here who really are extremly good.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
"single celled organism won't have a soul"
Yes, hmmmm. I got into an interesting discussion with a strongly religious friend of mine a while back on this sort of topic.
I asked if bacteria had souls, he said no. Fish? no. Monkeys? no. A human fetus? yes. An embryo? yes. A fertalized egg? yes. An unfertalized egg? no. Sperm? no. An egg with a sperm in it but without the DNA combined yet? no.
So I said "So the creation of a soul can be traced to the time when the two sets of genes combine?" and he said, "I guess so." And so I asked "well, what about when they are half way together? is there a soul then? Is there a half soul? What if i combined the DNA in a highly controlled enviornment and was able to hold them in this state?" He pretty much had to admit (for the first time ever, and we argue about this sort of thing a lot) that he really didn't know.
I don't think that I actually upset his views any, but it is interesting that even a highly religious and well read person like him could be confused by this fairly simple matter.
If you take it as a given that some small group of nasty people can create a disease that will wipe out the existing human population, then you'd damn well better have the technology to "upgrade" our immune systems to deal with such diseases!
"Nature" apparently allows us to do this too. If it defied physical law, the "laws of nature," well, it just wouldn't work now would it? I've never understood why anything we do is not "natural," but anything any other species does is. People who think like this tend to also say that we are no better than any other thing on earth. If we are no better, then wouldn't whatever we do be "natural" as well??? If what we do is unnatural, you are admitting that there is something that sets us apart from nature. Setting us apart in a dominant way. If that is the case, then we are in fact better. So either way, we should do whatever we want as a species.
If we wanna save the environment, well, that is for us. Not for the spotted owls. If we think it's actually for some dumb birds, we're deluding ourselves.
I read somewhere once, that a group of scientists
had built a tank of gasses that were similar to earth when life supposedly evolved.. according to darwin's notes.. and they did get amino acids to form.. it was interesting, but I probably got the details somewhat wrong since I think it's been 6 years since I read it.. does anyone know what it is i'm referring to? who did it, where it was done?
"And how can this be? For he is the
That is bizarre. I'm really glad that they are consulting religous leaders. I'm sure that they will be told not to proceed, but I'm also sure that they will anyway. As much as I want technology to push ahead, I really hope that they fail. I believe in God, and I don't really think that we should create life. Increasing the standards of living is one thing, but I have to disagree with this.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Genetics are just math.. enough time and research
and people can figure it out.. I guess it's
newsworthy to note the progress, but sooner or later there will be organizations with genetic kickstart disks and a php interface, so you can create the perfect baby and mail order some frozen spermcicles to your door.
"And how can this be? For he is the
"In itself it's an interesting piece of scientific research. But it depends on your motivation. If you are trying
to prove the non-existence of God that's one thing, but if you are just carrying out an experiment that is
quite another.
What is this?????
What other reason is there for a religious group for dissallowing attempts to prove the religion is flawed? If the religion is in fact correct, there is no need to worry about people trying to prove otherwise. However, if the religion is indeed flawed, they're all better of knowing it. Unless the religious leaders have something to hide....
And the immune system attacks, and clippy is smashed into a thousand pieces!
Don't hold your breath, but the pretty things are going to hell. And so is clippy!
Of course, by some peoples definition of life, viruses aren't alive. They don't consume food or excrete and they don't have any senses, both of which are common parts of definitions of life.
Why? It's a statistical fact that the southern usa has a very high percentage of religious people, and thus logical that if their population increases, there would be more religious people, since religion allways always comes from the parent(s) being religious.
Why does god want our love? (Hmmm, ST:TOS flashback) I see no use for loving god, so if god really wants what is best for me, wouldn't he just want me to be happy, instead of wanting me to love him. (And for that matter, why would he want me to sit in a big building every sunday singing songs that are mostly very boring musically, and sermons that are not the most enjoyable thing either?).
If he wants us to be happy, why is there war?
Or isn't us being happy what he wants?
Agreed. I would have thought that he would stop now that his karma is not publically viewable. At least good sence prevailed and this change was made.
Please reread the article!!! All that the scientists are going to do is knock out a hundred or so genes of this tiny bacterium. We knock out genes all the time in the lab-- theyre just taking it to the extreme. Theyre taking a chainsaw to this poor bug to see how much they can chop off and still keep it barely alive. Granted this is an interesting experiment, but it has NOTHING to with "creating" life. What these scientists and the media have created is a bunch of sensationalism. Most likey because theyve run short of funding.
Ditto. No one cares that you beat him, Mr Signal 11. Comments were made for discussion, debate and enlightenment, not karma and first posts.
Sure, some educated people turn to religion but most do not - it's mainly the province of the poor and undereducated these days.
Maybe it was always so; just a couple of hundred years ago atheism carried horrific penalties in most Christian countries (some Islamic countries are still like that of course). So most atheists would have kept quiet about it anyway.
My contention is that the default belief system for the educated in our society today is secular. People who are unhappy or confused about their place in life will sometimes turn to religion if it is readily available. But if the poor were educated, and the number of believers dwindled, there soon wouldn't be any organised religions to speak of. Inevitably a lot of those unhappy people who today turn to religion would then more readily find something else to turn to.
Don't believe it can't happen; belief systems lose popularity and finally disappear to be replaced by something else. It has occurred again and again throughout history.
I'm not against God BTW, I'm just against superstition and ignorance.
--
With regard to philosophy, it's not essentially anti-scientific. Science was once regarded as a branch of philosophy, it still is really in that it contains its own axioms and its own system of logic. The basic methodology was laid down by Sir Karl Popper who was himself a philosopher. Science is still policed by epistemiology which is about the nature of knowledge, whether, how and what we can know, and whether we can know that we know.
Another branch of philosophy important to scientists is ontology, the only tool we possess for the exploration of the unobservable: the quantum realm, the origin and ultimate fate of the universe; what lies beyond it in other dimensions. Even the nature of ourselves, our consciousness.
In its most general sense, philosophy is the science of how to think in a rational manner.
When I was a young man I thought all philosophy was all meaningless twaddle. This was basically due to a fault in my education, I'd simply not been shown anything really interesting. Since then however I've seen a lot of really thought provoking stuff right at the bleeding edge of scientific discourse.
So I believe teaching philosophy in our schools would be a good thing. It would make people learn to think rationally for themselves. If it ever made them "lose faith in science" it would only be for the right reasons, in injecting a healthy modicum of scepticism and enabling everybody to make up their own minds logically about the latest proposed experiment.
That would be better than the typical responses seen today: whether blindly assuming the scientists know what they are doing and have everyone's best interests at heart; or obediently accepting the condemnations handed down by their high priest; or recoiling in simple ignorance and fear.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
My feelings exactly. You put that very well. Your other respondent "Saige" points out that investigating the unknown is precisely what scientists are for. But in your words, "dicking around with things they know very little of" the word "things" implicitly refers to powerful, dangerous things that they don't even know for sure that they can control. Things that could hurt us all if it goes badly.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
God can't have created the universe. Isn't the universe defined as a class containing everything that exists? So god is a member of the class, thus he can't have created it, because to create something I assume you need to exist.
I didn't mean to imply that morals cannot exist without religion.
Actually, it's quite accurate to state that morals cannot exist apart from God. This is recognized even by the most humanistic atheists and is the root of the nihilism that they inevitably espouse if they follow thier beliefs to thier logical conclusions.
As Dostoevsky said, "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable." Aha, you say, "Dostoevsky was a Christian!" (as if this somehow invalidates his point), but interestingly, all prominent humanistic atheist thinkers reach the same conclusion: Sartre, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, the list is endless.
If you understand nothing else of philosophy, understand this: The existence of objective truth depends completely upon the existence of God - No God, no truth. Ultimately, this is what all philosophies boil down to - and many philosophers on both sides of the argument have validated this point over the years. If it is indeed possible to know anything, (especially anything of a moral nature) then God must exist.
Furthermore, it's prima facie nonsense to reach that point, as the humanist/atheist philosophers do, and then make the self contradictory assertion that the only thing that is objectively true is that there is no objective truth! (But this non-sequitur is a logical requirement of their determination to deny God exists, so they persist.)
This is not a minor point. If you believe that it's possible to *know* anything, you must *necessarily* believe in God (or at least acknowledge his existence by your acts and every thought, even while consciously mocking His deity.)
Why should these scientists talk to religious leaders? Because they're the ONLY ones in a position to provide valid input on the morality of such a venture. (Although I'm sure they're speaking to some to whom truth is a foreign concept...)
I find it a constant source of amusement that there are so many here on slashdot that pride themselves in their logical methodical thought processes, and yet reject Christianity out of hand, while Chrisitianity can truly be said to be the only logically consistent worldview on the planet. (Don't even bother flaming me in response until you've read John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion..)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I'd love to kick the crutches your reasoning is resting on, but first, could you define soul as you see it? What do you believe there is more to a human, except for a lot of chemicals?
I'm quite opposed to animal experiments, but let's face it: We kill animals in labs all the time. Does the fact that we created it mean that we suddenly can't kill it anymore?
Speaking of which, God didn't even write the bible. People who believed they were speaking god's mind did. When I was told this I felt that most of the bible was invalidated. (I'm 14, I was told this somewhere around 10, so I was still at the age where it doesn't sound far-fetched to think that god wrote the bible :-) lol)
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
O come on. I don't like the existance of organized religion very much, but in the short term, they do more good than harm, (i.e. salvation army, AA, etc.) even if in the long run they impede the development of humanity.
Yes, I'm perfectly willing to accept that I'm just a very big bacteria. You can't disprove there's a big invisible turkey hovering above your computer right now, but does that make you worship it? Why not?
If there is a god, and he does think that, why doesn't he give us a signal of it? Because without some divine signal, we could just as well be scammed by a bunch of con-artists. If he really wants us to do this, why doesn't he do all the special effects stuff.
(And don't say I should read the bible, that it speaks of such miracles. Ever notice how they are all from so long ago that there is NO chance of finding out what really happend).
1. People fear the unknown.
2. The consequences of artificially created life are unknown.
3. The consequences of naturally ocurring life are unknown. (we can't tell the future)
Therefore: People fear life.
We fear ourselves!
Nature has already tried countless variations on new life with great anticipation and much fear only to have arrived at the present. A situation accepted by most if not all present. Evidently the only criteron for acceptance of the present is to be present.
On this planet we have had several (7 or so) dynasties of living organisms. In each,evolution spread across the earth filling all available niches and then sat stable for millennia until a cataclysmic event killed off most existing life (meteor etc.) and allowed another round of evolution to occur. The round previous to us, the mammals, were the dinosaurs. They lasted 165 milllion years, we havent lasted 1 million yet.
I doubt we can make anything in the biology lab that will wipe a significant percentage of us out never mind all life on earth. It is far more likely that we will destroy our environment (pollution/nuclear bombs) or create 'intelligent' devices (computers) that ruin our environment to thwart a perceived threat from us. I guess people are not that afraid of computers since they do not have the ability to replicate yet and hense are still predictable....if you programmed a computer to control robots that made computers and gave it some AI capabilities would that constitute a lifeform. Would that be predictable? Should we be afraid of that?
Whatever, I'm here!
no sig.
So no, I don't distrust science per se, but I do kinda cringe when scientists start dicking around with things they know very little of.
Then do you even understand what science is about? They play with what they don't know much about so that they can learn about it and increase that knowledge.
If they stuck to what they knew about, then how would they ever learn anything? You might get a little bit more familiar with it, find out a few details, but never make any big breakthroughs when everything you work with is well explored.
Heck, if they stuck to what they knew from the beginning, we'd never have gotten anywhere. Even which foods we can eat have been discovered through trying what they didn't know.
If we could keep the politicians and buisinesspeople out of it, then we would see it screwed up and abused.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Ehm, hate to burst your bubble, but I think that was some guy they called jesus.... (Not that I'm christian or anything else religious, but it doesn't hurt to get the 'facts' right).
It can't be worse than the 1000 years of darkness religion cost us in the Dark Ages (roughly 0 to 1000 A.C.) where man made no notable progress thanks to overt, oppressive, Christianity.
Your definition of 'man' appears to only include Northern Europe. I do believe the Chinese, for instance, were progressing just fine, and that we all benefited when their ideas were eventually brought to other parts of the world.
Your definition of 'progress' appears only to include technology and manufacturing. During the period 0 - 1000A.D. in northern Europe, architecture improved dramatically, decorative arts and techniques spread and developed, societies became more advanced and homogenous, and great works such as Beowulf and the Book of Kells were created.
And as for the technology, I think you'll find shipbuilding took great steps forward as well.
In fact, I think you'll find the 'Dark Ages' are so called because much of the advances of Roman civilisation were lost, which had everything to do with Romes loss of military power and political cohsesion, and nothing to do with religion, which at the time was in any case largely non-christian.
Thanks.
-----
While I agree with you that it would be mistake to seek ethical guidance from a single set of dogmatic beliefs, I must tell you that I am tired of hearing this rather poor understanding of the Christian church's role in medieval history repeated as though it were fact.
The Catholic Church is almost singlehandedly responsible for preserving literacy and social order following the collapse of the Roman Empire. (BTW, I am not a Catholic, merely a humble student of history). The "Dark Ages" is a myth.
The scholars in the monasteries copied and preserved much ancient knowledge. Some of them (notably in Ireland and England) even made use of the knowledge. Read up an Alcuin of York.
And if you really want to thank someone for progress, thank the Arabs, especially those in Andalusia in what is today southern Spain. They made great strides in astronomy, navigation, and mathematics and did an even better job of preserving the knowledge of the ancient world than did the northern European monastics.
By the 12th century, western mathematics was well beyond anything that had been accomplished in ancient Rome.
Bigotry and dogma are even-present in human communities. The repressive role of the church came up at two critical points. The first was at the rise of Universities (read about the early years of the University of Paris and the Church's ban on Aristotle), and the other was the Protestant Reformation. In both of those cases, their actions were the actions of a temporal institution faced with a direct challenge to thier power and authority. Their wicked and opressive responses were because they were humans with threatened power, not because they were Christians.
Christianity is an evangelical religeon. This makes it very different from many world religions. This evangelical nature builds in a duty to convert people to the faith. It is an agressive ideology. You will get "shit" from the odd overzealous Christian because that person believes that you are in trouble and he wishes to save you. You may not wish to be saved (because you do not believe in the peril), but at least be aware that it is a desire to do good that motivates the "shit giver."
As for "sanctity of life," well, I think that even if you are an atheist, you should have a little awe at the prospect that we humans may create a life form. Surely this capabilityis an awesome prospect and not to be done lightly.
Christianity is not some intellectual void, nor is it the source of ignorance and bigotry. Some Christians have little intellect, and there are ignorant and bigoted Christians, but I beleieve these words are not synonomous with "Chirstian."
John Milton in "Paradise Lost" has Adam confront God with a terrible challenge: "Did I ask thee, God, to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?" What more human question is there? Why am I here? I did not ask to be made, so why I am I here? Why do I live? Why must I know love and then loss?
Before we create a life form, we should ask ourselves Adam's question. Will our "children" millions of years hence, turn to us, not knowing who we were, and ask why they are here?
Parents should ask this before they have children. Why should we not ask it before we create life?
I am myself a scientist by training. I didn't start out mistrustful. But I've lately come to realise that there's more motivation at work in many scientist's minds than the pure advancement of human knowledge, or the betterment of the human condition.
eg: Some of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project (esp. Edward Teller, but not Robert Oppenheimer)
eg: Nazi scientists working on "efficient" methods of human extermination and cruel medical experiments.
eg: The scientist who invented napalm.
eg: Randy Katz, inventor of Smart Dust microscopic bugging devices (mentioned in an article on Slashdot a few weeks ago). I don't mean to compare him with genocides, but he seems to care little about the potential for misuse of his devices.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I admit, it could have been put in a more subtle way, but it's a normal biological phrase. What makes people so special? Not much to make a fuss about imho.
This artical needs two more points to move from number 10 to number 9 in the 'slashdot hall of fame' And I'm going to move it there :P
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Ehm, hate to burst your bubble, but I think that was some guy they called jesus.... (Not that I'm christian or anything else religious, but it doesn't hurt to get the 'facts' right). Unless you think jesus was god undercover? :-)
Your right. However, this kind of discussion never hurts.
Why_ should the consult religous leaders at all? It is this very experiment which is going to prove them irrelevant once and for all. After all, if man can create life, then what makes "god" so special?
It's a viewpoint thing. Scientists are most concerned with CAN we, Religion is more concerned with Should we. Both sides can present their views and then we can decide what the ramifications of humans creating life are and whether it's worth it. After all, look how we treated the stuff that was already here, should we bring a new life form into the world simply to abuse it?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Your argument is spurious. If it were not, there would be no pathogenic bacteria.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
there *are* reasons to be worried about this, but they don't have anything to do with the "creation" part; making "creation" a special thing outside of human reach seems to be a christian knee-jerk reaction, but I see no real basis for it.
As a Christian I'd have to say we stepped past the point where God said 'Don't eat the bloody apple you dick.' and are now to the point where God is saying, 'Do whatever the hell you want, if I don't want you to do something you bloody well won't be able to.' so I say go for it, as long as we are pretty sure we know what we're doing let's give it a whirl!
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Well, a prokaryotic cell is an order of magnitude less complex, but, agreed, this would still be a pretty incredible jump to make.
OTOH, a *relatively* simple "organism", capable of performing transcription etc given a suitable environment (ie. a host organism) but incapable of independent activity should certainly be within our grasp in the short-medium term. What we're talking about here is something akin to a virus and WOULD NOT be alive.
As for your anaerobic atmosphere, you seem to be under the impression that water can be easily converted into free oxygen + hydrogen gas. This is NOT the case. There are plenty of environments on Earth today that are totally anaerobic, and there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that life evolved under such conditions.
http://www.klub.org/
Do you really imagine that the scientists working on this project don't know that? Of course they do. But the cell machinery in a small mycobacterium is extremely simple compared to that of a eukaryote like yeasts, amoebae or humans.
Even if they wanted to synthesize all the parts of the parent cell themselves, this would hardly be insurmountable - we have automated peptide synthesis machines now. And cell wall chemistry is well understood too.
But it's hardly likely to come to this. They will probably jsut take one specimen of the natural Mycoplasma they have been studying, remove its single plasmid and insert the one they've synthesized. In principle, this is a little like cloning of eukaryotes using a denucleated ovum.
Within just twenty hours of repeated division (assuming one cell division per hour) the original parent cell material will have been diluted by a factor of 2**20 (over a million) and well before that point the cells will be surviving solely on what enzymes and structural proteins they can synthesize for themselves with their artificial genome.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I didn't mean to imply that morals cannot exist without religion. I did mean to say that religions believe that morality is their province and domain. Hence a moral issue is going to pull in the religious types.
That brings up another topic, which I won't go into much, except this. From what does one derive their moral position unless their is some higher reasoning than "I feel like it" or "it's good for me"? My own position is that this leads to relativism, which doesn't hold any water. What's "good" for you may be "evil" for me and then where does that leave us? Law is, at some level, based on right and wrong (hopefully), which derives from our concept of morals and ethics. I can see law being refined to handle new situations that didn't exist before, but I can't hold to the notion that morality can flip-flop from day to day based on how people "feel". There has to be a right and there has to be a wrong. It just makes more sense to me. And for that to work, there has to be a God that sets those rules. Mankind can't, because of what I've just said.
Anyway, that being said, you also mention that "artificially creating life is not mentioned in religious texts". Of course not. But the values that God stands for, the morality, is clearly laid out. That standard is an eternal truth you can apply at any time. That's what makes religious texts relevant beyond the period in which they were written. "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" is just as valid now as when Y'shua stated it almost 2000 years ago.
I also don't understand why people try to separate their religious life from the rest. I am an integrated person, a whole person. My opinions in one "section" of my interests carry over to many other things. To be otherwise would make me two-faced at best. I don't live a double life. Do the rest of you? (Not an accusation, just curious.) I think it perfectly reasonable for a scientist to have moral questions regarding his work, and turn to God for the answers.
CT
Constitutionally Correct
Sorry this is 16 hours after first post and too late to get moderated up... but for those hackers who want "code," or any download scavengers wanting the raw gene sequence data for M. Genitalium, I found it at ftp://ftp.tigr.org/pub/data/m_genitalium/
I never took exception to your philosophy, just your facts about the church's role in history. It did more preserving than destroying. There were no "dark ages." Eavery age is a battle between dogma and ignorance, and free inquiry and learning. I'm all for live and let live when it come to the eternal verities. Just keep in mind that the Western World would probably not have recovered literacy and science without the church, and it also would probably not have cast off hereditary political supermacy without the church.
It is very hard to label an entire institution "evil" or "good" and preserve one's duty the the truth.
Oh, one more thing. I never meant to say that you, specifically, are an atheist. When I said "Even if you are an atheist..." I meant a rhetorical "you," not any specific person. I would more properly have said "Even if one is an atheist..." but writing that way in a casual forum like this always comes across as obnoxiously pedantic.
I read somewhere once, that a group of scientists had built a tank of gasses that were similar to earth when life supposedly evolved.. according to darwin's notes.. and they did get amino acids to form.. it was interesting, but I probably got the details somewhat wrong since I think it's been 6 years since I read it.. does anyone know what it is i'm referring to? who did it, where it was done?
You are refering to Stanley Miller's experiment where he tried to create the compounds found in living things from a mixture of gases hypothesized to approximate conditions on Earth way back when.
I am quite sure that Miller was not working from Darwin's notes, however. The mixture of gases Miller used came from much more modern sources.
BTW, Miller was mildly sucessful, creating several interesting things in his apparatus. However these compunds were still far to simple and lacked the stereochemical chemical properties found in living things.
...something
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Just because a person is against organized religion does not make them an atheist or against the posibility of some brand of diety. It just makes them intelligent, seeing the source of organized religion.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I'm sorry, I realize none of you want to hear again the whole "playing god" thing, but I really think this has gone too far. Who does man think he is, to assume the role of god and create life? Are we really that conceited that we feel we are ALLOWED to create other organisms? I wasn't even thrilled when we began cloning other species, though at least we weren't starting with a lab table and ending up with a brand new organism.
I don't want to get off topic, but...man continues to disgust me. Too often we think that WE are the dominant species, the ones meant to survive. We are arrogant, and we are ignorant. Every day we cut down tons of trees for wood in order to keep industry alive. When will we realize that these very trees are what supply us with oxygen? And who gave us the job of ruining the habitats and lives of other organisms...why, just because we have more brainpower than them? People often say we're the smartest of species, but I disagree. For, if we truly were, we wouldn't be the only species on earth who kills its own for pleasure.
And now this. And now, we synthesize life, just another step in man's arrogant trip to the top. This comes at a time when we are trying to learn more about other plants, of which Mars comes to mind at the moment. The first thing we did when we found out we could get to Mars was send out probes to check if there was water there, and analyze the atmosphere -- why? Sure there were some minor scientific reasons: life on mars? history of mars? But the real reason - can it support human life? Once again, we are putting ourselves first, not worrying about how we will ruin Mars as we did Earth, and trying to extend our boundaries and God-given limitations.
Folks, I am not an overly religious person. But this has got to stop.
When will the realization that we are not the be-all end-all species set in, and finally limit our scientific expeditions?
Science can take us anywhere; it's time for us to set the limits on how far we'll let it take us.
---Blake
SO, if the scientists succeed, they by definition become GOD, correct? Can they put that after their names like MD or PhD?
seriously, though. It's just a matter of time. If someone can almost do this today, then imagine what types of life they'll be creating when they have a 1000 node cluster of 10ghz cpu machines helping to do the computation (say in 10 years)
sometime in the future, it might be a grad student exercise to synthesize an organism based on stereoisomers of amino acids.
Read K. Eric Drexlers book - Engines of Creation
Religion isn't going to like this, but then traditional religions generally don't seem as relavent to 20th century folk as they might have hundreds of years ago. Most people don't really like the idea of appending a religious text the way we'd append a constitution or law, either, so traditional religions can't very well deal with things like genetic engineering that didn't exist until a few decades ago. They have to rely on some subjective interpretation...
Not a troll about religion. Just my opinion. If you love god, that's great, but if you feel like religion doesn't speak to you concerns, read the first few chapters of The Celestine Prophecy and see if you agree (good book, but it lost me towards the end)
So, religion aside, the real issue is: who's going to fund creation of new life? My guess is that the US won't support it for political reasons, but that some 3rd world country will. Same with genetic engineering - you know that eventually somebody is going to start cloning humans.... and people *will* pay money (hey perverts: want a 21-year old Pamela Andersen clone? How about a clone of famous dead people? How about cloning sports stars and genetically enhancing them to have more mass, muscle, how about genetically enhanced wrestlers? is there any money in any of these?)
So, a few top scientists will disappear from the face of the earth, and then one day... BOOM! some earth-shattering announcements about new synthesized life forms.
You know that every country has probably discussed the idea of GENETIC WARFARE (it is, of course, an extension of biological warfare which every country has done extensive research in)
... and wouldn't oil companies like to develop oil-eating phages to clean up after their alcoholic ship captains when they crash tankers?
... and wouldn't the seed companies like to have seed that would grow in broader climate ranges and bear larger fruit and be STERILE so that you had to buy more seed (oh, wait, we're already doing that)
... and wouldn't livestock growers like to ensure that their cows gave more milk and that their turkeys had larger breasts (oh, wait, we're already doing that).. how about if we could grow just a chicken breast with no head or feathers?
... and wouldn't parents like to ensure that their offspring were disease and genetic defect free? we can test for stuff today, but imagine if you could go through a menu much the way you configure a linux kernel and add and subtract genes from a lifeform you create?
Face it , after the web,e-commerce, internet thingy become commonplace, the next big boom will be in biotech again, and it will possibly *NOT* happen in the US.
Hold on for a wild ride!
Just my 2 cents here:
I don't think the scientists were saying they needed to ask permission from their local clergy, but that they wanted to have a full debate about the ethical implications of such an experiment. Much of what goes on in scientific discovery and experimentation is subject to ethical reviews. Including religious leaders in such a debate/review is the right thing to do. These are the people in our society who are focused on matters of ethics and morality - their input would be needed and should not be ignored.
Religion shouldn't dictate strictly the bounds of scientific research, but at the same time it is foolish for science to ignore the religious/ethical/cultural world around them.
Everyone has a unique perspective, and it's entirely possible that everyone's perspective has a part of the truth. It's like the story of the blind men and the elephant.
Then, of course, you can always give J.R.R. Tolkein's famous reply to this conundrum, which he put in his poem "Philomyth to Mysomyth". This argument comes from the basis that if we're made in God's image, and God is a Creator, then we must also be creators. (Indeed, by this argument, to be otherwise would be to destroy our very essence.)
Last, but not least, there's the argument that God (whoever/whatever God may be) gave everyone free will. To renounce that gift is clearly something you can do, but since it goes against what God obviously wanted us to have, it's at best stupid and at worst a crime against nature.
Oh, and as for sailing around the planet, one of the earliest to do so, Saint Brenden the Navigator, did so on (so he claimed) God's orders. So, if more people had consulted religion back then, America might have been discovered a thousand years earlier. Religion is what you make of it, not the other way round.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There's a book "At home in the universe" by Stuart Kauffman which explains how the emergence of life (at least as far as the self replicating soup precursors to RNA/DNA) is actually pretty much inevitable rather than a fluke.
I agree with your position but... I don't like your analogies... lol. The nuclear bomb was a covert operation, if we had consulted religious leaders than it would've been public domain and we all know how much government (yes even democracy) hates telling us what it's doing. Then, as far as I know scientists didn't exterminate passenger pigeons, and if they did then they surely didn't plan their extinction! That's not how it works. Now here's a better analogy... "Scientists didn't consult religious leaders when they first thought of nuclear fission/computers/violent computer games/etc". Eh ok they arent the best either, if anyone comes up with a better one put em here :-)
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
They simulated the conditions of preprehistoric earth... volcanoes... lightning... they created a bacteria that would absorb "food" but it would not procreate. So by the definition of life it was not alive.
There were no volcanoes in Miller's experiment, only electric arcs (lightning).
He most certainly did not create a bacteria!
And as for this alledged bacteria, what "definition of life" are you applying. While I agree that a creature such as you describe is not alive, I am amazed at how you banty about the phrase "definition of life", like we have this all figured out already.
It is uninformed, incorrect posts such as these that threaten to make the internet practically useless as a learning tool. I can only pity the poor student who searches for information about this article and ends up reading this mostly ignorant discussion.
Hmmm...that was a little harsh, but i just don't see why people bother posting if they know nothing about what they are talking about.
Okay, i'll stop now, really.
While it's interesting that the scientists involved are waiting for the ethical debate to take place, I don't think it's going to make a difference. The procedure will be carried out no matter what the result is.
The progress of science is inherently unstoppable. It usually occurs not through breakthroughs but through small improvements made over time.
My guess is that there's nothing biologically revolutionary about the work these scientists are doing. Which means if they refuse to take the next step someone else will pick up where they left off. Even if some are convinced the practice is unethical others won't be. Given that and the influence of greed I think progress is certain.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
If you are wary of the opinions of religious leaders, why should you be any less wary of anyone's value-laden judgement on this question? I find the fact that scientists are claiming to seek religious guidance on this question supremely laughable. "We have discredited your Bible in each and every area of significance to which it lays claim; your God did not do what men claimed he did; all your judgements rely on disproved bunk. However, we would like to humor you and ask your opinion on this Very Important Question." Please!
For years, scientists have claimed that the question of the supernatural is outside the realm of science, and therefore, not their problem. Fine. Then don't consult a religious person for a religious perspective, because the answer you will receive is antithetical to the pursuit of science. Instead, they should consult their peers for a contrived (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way) and secular standard by which to judge their work. Keep religion out of it.
Right?
I don't know why they want to talk to religious groups, first off. That smells like a grab for some airtime and cheap publicity - Once you concider some of the impacts that this technology can have. From a step back, the only thing I've seen come out of religion recently is a lot of people killing each other and crazies annoying me at my front door in the morning.
Flamebait aside - here's why this is really important. My dad is a PhD Genetist, and has talked about one of the problems with biology for the longest time. Basically it comes down to this - biologists aren't too concerned with how things work, why they work, and how to use them.
One of his favorite stories goes like this - an alien biologist and an alien engineer land on Earth. They see a 2 TV sets, and don't know what they are. The biologist promptly gets his tools, microscope, sketchbook, and disscects the TV, counting and drawing each part, right down to the microscopic level. What does the engineer do? Hits the "power" button. :)
Once we can engineer life, we can make use of the only known self-replicating, self-assembling, kick-entropy-in-the-face system in the universe! The applications are endless, here's a few:
Want to colonize mars? Make a bacterium that feeds on mineral deposits and CO2 to generate massive amounts of Oxygen. Worred about infection and lifespan? An adquate understanding of the genes will allow you to program it to replicate 10 times, and then die - just like your cells die.
Need clean power? The article hit the nail on the head. PLANTS split water up into hydrogen and oxygen - albeit in small amounts - and there isn't a soul on the planet that can duplicate that system. My dad would get a kick out of biology texts, because they have the engineering equivilant of a "and then a miracle happens" block on their photosynthesis charts. This alone has the potential to revolutionalize every aspect of our lives!
Obviously there are dangers, but we're a species that lives with between 20k and 50k thermonuclear warheads turned on and able to extinct the planet with the confirmation of a code and the press of a button.
Quantifying life in chemical terms will open up a new science, breathe new life into biotech, maybe put an end to some of this religious crazieness, and most of all - get engineers working with biological systems, the most elegant computer system of all. Whoever made that analogy in an above post was a genius!
Kudos!
..don't panic
The problem with creating a new lifeform (and a tiny bacterium will probably be first since it's simplest) is that NO ONE can know for sure that the created life form won't be worse than than anthrax or E. Coli (sp?) and deadly to all life forms.... It matters not who they ask. Religious leaders don't have specialized access to Ultimate Truth. They're just people like you and me, as are the scientists. But someone, somewhere will try to create the life form sooner or later, so it would be better to do it now under rigorously controlled conditions than for some overzealous grad student at an ivy league school to kill off most of the east coast (though I suppose we could stand to do without New Jersey) for his thesis project. So I say, yes, do it, so we know how to deal with it if someone else does it too.
You can play God all you want thinking that you can create life.
Since when is thinking that you can create life == playing God? People have been accused of "playing God" long before biotechnology. Frinstance when they determine who shall live and who shall die, as in executions and triage wards. It's a trendy phrase, used to dis those who make unpopular decisions about life and death.
But you will NEVER BE God.
That depends on your definition of God. In the JudeoChristian tradition, it's true. Humans can never be God, because there can be only one God, and that job's taken. The best we can hope for is to be with God someday.
But there are other approaches to consider. In some traditions, humans are already Gods, or at the very least carry a part of the divine within them. Still others claim that some humans are Gods (f'rinstance the king, the emperor, etc.) but most are not and can never be. Who's right? I've got my own beliefs, but I can't say that I know.
It's yet another waste of your tax dollars.
That does not follow from your initial argument. If you think it's a waste of tax dollars, please tell why. Offer some reason. If it's only because we won't become Gods as a result, then all spending is a waste of money. You can't buy Godliness, at least not in any religion that I'm aware of.
i see two kinds of posts on this article: one type is the religious flamewar we see quite often and the other is a the "wow, now we can engineer bacteria for !" don't get me wrong, this is a very exciting prospect, but we've been able to engineer bacteria for various purposes for a long time. the exciting part of this is that scientists have narrowed down the most important genes and how they work together.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
Ok so this comment started out as a reply, but turned into something else when I noticed that the article does not actually say anything about religous leaders, or asking there opinion. It states the following "The idea is currently the subject of an ethical review "
So it's a question of Ethics, not Religion. Some may argue that the two are intertwined. For all we know they submitted it to a panel of their scientific peers.
It seems more likely that they recognize that what they are trying to do effects the future of all humanity:
"...the scientists involved say no
attempt will be made to proceed with the daring
experiment until there has been a full and public
debate."
and respect the fact that maybe it should be humanity's decision, not thiers.
The article states that there may be some debate on the subject that has religous overtones:
"The prospect of "scientists playing God", as
some will undoubtedly see it, is bound to
provoke some fierce arguments. "
But all that says is someone somewhere might do some bible thumping.
note that the majority of humanity is religous, therefore if the decision is made by humanity, it may end up being decided on religous grounds.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
"If God doesn't want us creating life, he'll find a good way to stop us, now won't he?"
:)
It would really suck if he did
"Besides, if all the religions can't even agree on who god is, what qualifies them for moral judgements?"
Last time I checked, science doesn't have a great track record on "moral" judgement either. Nuclear weapons, enviromental rape, super-bacteria created by the wide spread overuse of antibiotics (sp?), yada, yada. Oh science is DEFINATELY proven that it keeps moral implications high on their list.
Remember, every one asks can we do it. No one asks SHOULD we do it (Jurassic Park, right?).
Personally, I think we should. As long as we consider all consequences of our actions.
Scientists don't really have any training based on morailty. Generally they do what they do for science sake. We don't have many conservative leaders, by conservative I mean asking what affect this technology will have 10 generations from now. You can't exactly extrapolate out that far, but I think you know what i mean. People who might have insights in this area are probably religious leaders and philosophers.
If they actually have the ability to create even the most basic life forms, this is INCREDIBLY huge with ramifications beyond anything I can image. It won't be long before we can create complex organisms if this turns out to be true. Look at how quickly computers developed over the past 50 years. Amazing.
Our society has no mechanisms (institutions) to handle something like this. It's more like "if it makes money, go for it". Of course we do have laws limiting some harmful activities, but the church is the closest thing we have to a "moral" institution, regardless of what you think of them.
They should be consulting philosophers as well as a number of religious leaders. IMO, our society isn't ready for this, just like we aren't ready for genetic engineering. Given how our society acts twords most of it's population, the ability to do harm is too high.
Religious leaders would probably be against it, but they would probably also so that this isn't creating life. You can't "manufacture" a soul would probably be their argument.
Scientists: What does the religious community think about this?
Religious community: *ahem* We think that this move will bring 1000 years of Karmic damnation upon humanity (1000 pages of proof ensues)
Scientists: Hmmmmmm.... intriguing. But we're gonna do it anyway. We invited your overly verbose hineys to the table as a PR thing, it ain't like we're gonna listen to anything you say!
(New life is created)
(New life finds cure for humanity)
(A thousand years of Karmic damnation ensues)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
So instead, he gives us free will, but threatens us with eternal hell-fire should we happen to choose not to worship him.
I'm sure you know a metaphor when you see one, so I won't bother to explain it.
Many theologians believe that those who do go to Hell will actually prefer it to the presence of God that is Heaven. I'm not going to go into much depth here, but check out C.S Lewis's book The Problem of Pain for a good analysis of that idea.
I think that the ethical implications of this are enormous, and reach beyond the Judeo-Christian boundries that you think this is pushing. Note that the researchers only said "consult with religious leaders," without specification as to type.
There are those who think that ethics and religion don't go hand in hand. I disagree. That thing that Judeo-Christians like to call a consience is what drives us to a standard for ethics. The idea that an religious life is an ethical life is part of our core beliefs.
This is quite important, as you noted "We never stopped to think if we should." I must commend them for taking this step.
As a firm (but not rigid, for those that might call me intolerant) believer in God, I am impressed that in these times that the team even felt it was necessary to ask this question. Many posters here on /. seem to think that infomation is for information's sake alone, that ethics and religion have nothing to do with answers.
Do I think science should not be looking for this answer? No. Through science, we learn the mind of God. Perhaps in time, science can create life. But science can NEVER make something out of nothing. Only God can. So I don't feel that the creation of life belongs to God, per se. The soul, that belongs to God. Science may create the vessel, but never the essence.
For those of you who don't share my beliefs, that's fine. This is just my point of view. You're entitled to your own, just as I am.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
Join with me in our prayer
Our father who art on Slashdot
CmdrTaco be thy name
Give us this day our daily news
Forgive us our flames and bad Karma
As we forgive those who flame against us
Your website come
Thy posting be done
In the real world as it is online
I'd give this one a "Flamebait", and the original press release a "Troll-ing for research dollars".
:-(
DNA is DNA, whether you build it from scratch or cut-and-paste using genetic engineering. We're creating life, let's call the pope. Yeah, right!
Wish I got my LNUX today!
- Different perspective. It's always nice to get a different POV than yours, if only to make you stop and think.
- Gauge possible reaction from public. Who would have a better idea of what John Q. Public might think, the scientists or the clergy?
- Never underestimate the power of good PR.
I could go on, but the question I would ask is, why not?P.S. I'm a devout agnostic.
Do we have that right to kill it? Is that murder? If we mess up somehow, do we have a new species, and then are we allowed to cause it's extinction?
This brings back memories of Asimov's robot books, actually. We create the 'life-form', and then we're not legally allowed to kill it (except these life-forms can actually kill it).
ps. I'm all for it.
"We have discredited your Bible in each and every area of significance to which it lays claim; your God did not do what men claimed he did; all your judgements rely on disproved bunk. However, we would like to humor you and ask your opinion on this Very Important Question."
Those are some pretty hefty claims for science you have there. Care to offer any support for them?
Boy, am I tired of the unfounded centrality the genome has in the public consciousness. Even most scientists, who should know better, talk as if the genome is the only essential component of life.
"Technically we would need to synthesise a genome and see if it led to a living organism."
Uh, a genome on its own, synthesized or not, will never lead to a living organism! It requires extremely complicated biological machinery to transcribe, process, and then translate the DNA into proteins. This is not a trivial matter. For all our advances in the field of cloning, for example, we still have to stick our manipulated DNA into a naturally produced egg. DNA is a very simple molecule; the rest of the fertilized egg is not be so easy to synthesize.
Being able to build DNA is great, but DNA on its own does nothing! Only when you have DNA wrapped in an elaborate package do you have the possibility of life. Focusing only on the DNA is like believing that once you have a blueprint, you don't need to know anything about tools to build a house.
Sorry this is long, but its important...
Before the beginning of this century, the general feeling in the scientific community was that humans would shortly posess all the knowledge of nature and the means by which to control it in a finite period of time. Science would merely be assigned the job of filling in the small holes in our knowledge. At the dawn of this century that optimism was destroyed by things like general relativity, and later, genetics, that proved the world was infinitely more complex than we had any ability to understood.
Here we sit, content in our inevitable ability to accomplish whatever we choose in some finite period of time, convinced that we posess adequate knowledge to do almost anything, or that this knowledge will quickly be gained, when in reality, our children will look at us with that same bewilderment about our udder backwardness that we see our parents with. The tech press allows us to brandish our pathetic understanding of their science, as if we actually understand, and then to feel an amazing sense of pious condescesion about the inevitable march of science, that we don't understand, despite the fact that, like out greatgrandparents, we don't have any conception of the breadth and depth of the universe.
We act as though organizing the DNA of an amoeba is the seminal accomplishment of the history of the universe because we assume that if we can prove our abilities for small cases of n and the ones that follow, then all cases are proven, asserting our godliness. How can there be religion if we have the power of God? In reality, we know little of what the universe holds for us, and all of that knowledge, all of those abilities, would not be communsurate with understanding or obtaining its creation.
What we fail to understand is that as Christians understand our creation "in his image," we are allowed to understand, and to imitate, and possibly even encouraged to master the world that God gave us, yet we are also called to be stewards of it, and to care for it. That we understand a small pittance of God's thoughts at creation is not so entirely remarkable, and does not give us the power of a god.
You don't have to defend God from the scientists.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
LOL... so you think you're as special or more special than God just because you figured out how to take apart something He has built and re-assemble it to something else that still works? It's like taking apart your car and re-assembling it to another car, and then claiming that you invented cars. Rather myopic, if you ask me.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
Why should they care what the religious leaders think? If God doesn't want us creating life, he'll find a good way to stop us, now won't he? Besides, if all the religions can't even agree on who god is, what qualifies them for moral judgements?
I'm going to go off the deep end and propose an ethical rational behind this creating life thing. Somebody's got to do it, so that the experiment can be done right, and we slashdotters have the tenacity to take the initiative, no? What it boils down to, of course, is if the public is ready for it. I'll expound on that after my rational.
Athiestic Ethical Rational Number FtW001Under a sufficiently controlled environment this experiment can be done safely and ethically. First off, comparison to Jurassic Park is a good warning but scale is an issue. It is conceivable to build a sealed, starile room in which the experiment can be carried out and terminated. Such rooms already exist and harbor such dangerous organisms as Bochelism, HIV, and Anthrax. We are thus already prapared to handle the experiment with relative safety.
If we create it, we can destroy it. This is what should be done. Until we have examined all of the ethical ramifications of exposing the outside world to our creation, we should not let it leave this room. We destroy living creatures in the name of science all the time, particularly micro-organisms. This would be nothing new.
Since we cannot begin to comprehend the uses of this technology until we try it, we should try it in a controlled situation. As each use is discovered, we should have an intelligent and responsible group of people examine its ethics. Only by doing this step by step can we be prepared to deal with some rogue lab going out on its own and doing ethically questionable things.
The key is that now that the technology is at hand, ignorence is more dangerous than striking out on shaky ground. If we balk at this, somebody is going to do something that we don't understand and hurt somebody before we can say "now wait a minute!"
Obvously, my arguments are founded on certain fundemental assumptions, such as that what we are currently doing is ethical to begin with. If you disagree with these, than you can't argue the details, just come up with your own rational. My point is that we should be hashing out rationals left and right, right?
Now, that said, the real obstacle here is public opinion. By that, I don't mean Joe Sixpack exactly. I'm refering to the religious leaders that the scientists are consulting, and politicians, and corperations, and anybody and everybody who acts as a spokesperson or leader of the public. If the majority of these people are not ready for this technology, and by ready I mean a variety of things, then the experimentors are going to run into a world of trouble.
I'm sure you can imagine what I'm talking about. If the scientists went ahead without consulting everybody, you'd have religious terrorists bombing the labs (as other /.ers have suggested), you'd have corperations patenting the procedure and using it to create the ultimate protein food or the ultimate weapon, and you'd have government agents snatching key information from the lab databases, or whatever government agents really do, and you'd have more people voting for the candidate who wants to cut back on science.
And that's my pair of coppers
-- "So far, I have not found the science" -Soul Coughing
Genes do not an organism make. The most apt analogy is that the genes are all the code for an OS. For a functioning OS, the code itself is necessary but not sufficient. For that we need hardware to execute the code. In the case of the cell the hardware is not specified entirely by the genes - some of it is in fact inherited from previous generations of the organism but not in the form of DNA. As an example, one of the most important of these is the membrane that contains the cell. There are no "genes" for the membrane, yet it does not form on its own - it is entirely derived from previous membranes. The energy that most cells use largely comes from an electric and chemical potential across this membrane - without it there is no "life", there is just a collection of genes. The key concept here is continuity of life through evolution from time imemorial to the present day.
Suppose we start with a huge OS full of extraneous and useless things. We widdle the code down so that eventually we have a "minimal OS". Does that mean we created something new? Certainly not. When these people delete all the "extra" genes, they would certainly not have created a new life form - they would have modified an existing organism - something that is done countless times on a daily basis with experimental organisms.
Now if we start from an artificial membrane "sack", squirt into it the machinery needed to transcribe DNA and produce proteins, put in some DNA, zap it to establish an electrical gradient then watch it grow and divide, then we would have really done something. The size of the DNA and the number of genes is not so important - we can easily manipulate DNA with ten times that number of genes.
So what have these people done then? Well a mildly interesting intellectual excercise and a nice story for the BBC. The greatest impact of this story will be the cries of outrage by the misinformed, and the un-needed (and undeserved) bad publicity for all scientists.
I would wager that their "organism" would not last long before a terminal mutation occurs.
.9 of the time (In reality there are a lot more 9's, but I don't know how many). So, every time the organism would normally reproduce, it does. So each generation only outputs 1.8 times as many decendants as the previous one.. Since it's an exponential curve, yes this is a bunch slower, but .. still. One terminal mutation only kills that instance of the organism.
Okay, so let's say that DNA replication works right as rarely as
On the ohter hand, this is an organism that's unlikely to ever evolve any further (there's not a lot of junk in it to shuffle around)..
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
And to the person who claims that this is just a dialog and not approval, you are very naive.
First, science has a built in peer review process. To open this issue up to public debate is wrong. Science has its own built-in procedures to decide these issues. This discussion must take place considering normal scientific methods and within the already established scientific forums.
Second, public opinion based on ignorance is utterly worthless. Far too many people base their opinions on sensationalized news stories and wacko religious nuts. For the most part, these people know nothing of the methodologies and theories on which science is based. People believe weird things for weird reasons and are uniquely unqualified to objectively evaluate cutting edge science.
Finally, this is not a religious issue. To the extent that mankind can create life using their own knowledge and technology is the extent to which that creation is not a concern of religion. I'm sure this won't stop the loony religionists from chiming in with their opinions. This is not elitism because anybody in the world is free to know the science and join the debate within the standard forums.
Judgment should not come from the public or theologians, but from fellow scientists who are much more likely to comprehend the true value and risks of the work. This is why established scientific procedures should be followed in this matter. To do otherwise is to stand the scientific method on its ear. How many people think that Linus should allow Jerry Falwell to judge his work on the Linux kernel? The principles are the same.
Ignoring theological implications, for the moment, what other implications are there? For example, could this be used to produce an artificial biological weapon, with custom-made properties?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
While the question of Can vs Should is valid, it is also moot. Anything that can be done will be done, regardless of if it should be. Should we make Nuclear weapons? Does the answer to that question stop any sufficiantly advanced (and it isnt that complex) country from making their own? trying to stop it at this point is trying to put the djini back in the bottle. The best you can hope for at this point is to control it intelligently and even that is unlikely.
-It is this courts ruling that Science must maintain a distance of 100yds from Relirion at all times.
-- Hail Eris
I'm not supprised at all about this; it seemed to be a matter of time. A large part of the problem is not in understanding how a cell works, but in building the tools that permit scientists to investigate how the cell works and in doing experiments.
It's like trying to figure out how a computer works and the only tool we have to use is a bulldozer. Most of us know how a computer works, but if the only way we could program a computer was by hitting it with the shovel of a bulldozer, we'd have a hell of a time experimenting with the computer...
OK, you're wrong.
You assume that a virus is something that will attack you. This isn't so.
You're also assuming they'd create a virus. Why not something algae-like?
I mean, heck, man, there are a lot of microbes that aren't virii. Most of them, probably.
Further, virus dna is understood well enough that common rhinovirii have been used to manufacture drugs. Interferon-Alpha was manufactured experimentally by performing genome encoding on a genetically engineered rhino virus such that it was instructed to infect only a specific gene sequence of vat grown pig stomach cells, and instruct those cells to manufacture interferon-alpha.
So, to allay your fears, well, I guess I didn't even try. What you speak of has been possible for quite a while, in some form.
But no, virii are actually pretty complex compared to green slime.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
You're not thinking straight. In a tiny colony of a million bacteria who undergo fission about once every hour, a mutation affects only one of them. If the worst comes to the worst, it dies. The other 999,999 go on to become 1,999,998 within the next hour. If the food supply is limited, many individual bacteria may mutate themselves to death without affecting the climax population size or even substantially impacting the time taken to get there. So mutations even in vital genes are not really a problem.
And of course mutations in "junk" DNA are of neutral value to the organism.
Organisms which have a short life cycle are designed to cope very well with a high proportion of deleterious mutations, because the losers are quickly replaced. And some mutations which are deleterious under normal circumstances are advantageous in others, so today's weakly mutant is tomorrow's lucky survivor with all the food to himself.
Thus the net value to a bacterium of mutation in vital genes is probably positive.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
"After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter."
Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Several decades ago, scientists thought that all organic chemicals were different from inorganic chemicals in possessing some special "life-force". This was finally disproved when the first of many organic chemicals (i think it was ammonia) was synthesized from inorganic chemicals.
The field of organic chemistry that that this discovery heralded has affected out life significantly in a number of different way ranging from pharmaceuticals to plastics, to food products (does spam have an organic basis ?:).
Now we are again pushing back the frontiers of the mysterious "life-force" by synthesizing "life" from inorganic chemicals . It is exciting to think about what new fields and new ranges of products this may spawn. Also it is probably another good time to redefine our beliefs about "life" itself.
I am not too concerned about the negative possibilities, nearly all powerful technologies pose some sort of threat. Force after all may be used for its Good Side or for its Dark Side.
Also I firmly believe that they should consult, a board of peers rather than religious leaders. If we had been letting religion tell us what we should be studying we would still be back in the Dark Ages.
I look forward to hearing more about this reaearch and wish them the best of luck .
Smthng.
Why should they care what the religious leaders think?
Because only a sociopath doesn't care what other people think. Religious leaders are other people.
This does not mean one should always give in to the will of other people - only that it's usually a good thing to give it at least a passing consideration. I hope they don't only consider what religious leaders think about this. A great many people, from all walks of life, might have objections, concerns, or even just questions that should be answered.
Not that it matters a whole lot - these things will be attempted whether there is objection or not. Anyone who has ever been told they're not supposed to even try to do that with a computer knows what I'm talking about. Gene hackers can be every bit as compulsive as computer hackers. Right now it just costs too much to attempt projects like this one without the monetary support of large universities, corporations, or governments.
But it's getting cheaper all the time.
Note: The following will most likely end in a rant and a line containing "sorry for the rant."
I am so sick of hearing about god, and people trying to say what god wants us to do and what he doesn't want us to do. Who says god didn't lay everything out perfectly so we would discover how to create our own little organisms at that exact moment? Who says god doesn't want us to create life?? If you ask me, based on catholicism (i know little about other religions, and I don't consider my self a catholic) reproducing is what god put us here to do. So what if we're not using our own parts to reproduce? Proliferating life is the way to go as far as god says. Whether it's human life or not, it's life, and there's nothing wrong with making more life.
OK now here's another point: Who says god exists? Now just think about that, i'm not gonna go explaining my position and everything, as you know where i'd go with it.
Point 3: On the subject of man destroying the environment... I'm all for keeping the environment healthy, but surely you can't equate creating a new organism in a laboratory as eclologically distressing. I could see creating a new organism with the purpose of altering something, and releasing it into the wild, but that's another story. I'm not suggesting that we do that. I'm suggesting that science for the purpose of science is important in our existance if we're ever going to leave this rock and move somewhere else after we destroy it.
Point 4: Mars? How would we ruin mars? It's a wasteland as far as I see, and if we don't find life anywhere in it then I say it's free reign. Hell, we'd have to improve mars just to bring it up to the level of habitable by humans. Sure you could make the argument that "habitable by humans is not necesarily habitable by martian organisms" but as i said, unless we find some life there, we can do what we want to mars. The key part is: Unless we find life there. I'd agree completely that if we discover life on mars then we shouldn't terraform mars to human comfort without consideration of these organisms. But here comes:
Point 4!: Survival of the fittest. If there is some organism on mars that may one day evolve into something sentient and wonderful then great, let it try. But if it's wiped out by expanding humans then it probably wouldn't have become so wonderful. Evolution teaches us that smart/savvy/stronger animals live and proliferate, while stupid/slow/weak animals die off and fade into the background or become extinct. Humans have evolved so far and they are probably to the point of "Monopoly" where according to the DoJ we should be broken up. Maybe colonization is the way to go. Maybe if a substantial portion of earths humans move to another planet then earth's ecology can start working harder and get back into the point of healthy. K I'm out of rant material, can't believe you read it all.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Does anybody else find it weird that science has to basically ask religion if its ok to do something? Is that the right path? Is an answer of "Only God should create living things" an acceptable scientific argument?
I do not believe in the same God that the world's religious leaders believe in. Therefore is it right to deprive me of this scientific advance?
Now, I'm not arguing that we should just run right out and do it. Like I said at the top, "whether we should" is indeed a valid question. I just find it weird to think of science as asking religion, as if they are the ones that should be consulted. If we'd done that 300+ years ago would anybody have bothered to try sailing around the planet?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Last time I checked, there was a buffalo user group that hasn't been touched since 1997., but i'll check your thing out.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
The experiment that you mention was an attempt to simulate the so-called "primordial soup". A glass globe was filles with gasses (mainly CH4, CO2 & N) and liquids which were theorised to be similar to those prevalent on Earth several billion years ago. This globe was carefully sterilised to prevent contamination by modern organisms.
This mixture was then subjected to electrical discharges (in the form of a spark gap) and ultraviolet radiation. The contents were then analysed and found to contain several fundamental amino acids.
It may be possible to engineer an organism with this 'core' set of genes, to see if it is correct, and to work iteratively to a confirmed 'core' set of genes. I wouldn't call this 'creating' life, it's really modifying an existing organism, similar to what is done regularly by molecular biologists, but with a new goal. It will help understanding of existing organisms, but isn't anywhere close to making a 'new' form of life.
Jim Lund
>I am so sick of hearing about god, and people
>trying to say what god wants us to do and what
>he doesn't want us to do. Who says god didn't
>lay everything out perfectly so we would
>discover how to create our own little organisms
>at that exact moment?
Well, most people generally find out what God seems to want by reading the Bible. It also states in the Bible that God has set us back from where we'd advanced to more than once. READ.
>Who says god exists?
That is what each man and woman must find out for themselves. It's the whole point.
>On the subject of man destroying the
>environment... I'm all for keeping the
>environment healthy, but surely you can't
>equate creating a new organism in a
>laboratory as eclologically distressing.
>I could see creating a new organism with
>the purpose of altering something, and
>releasing it into the wild, but that's
>another story.
I'll give you an example: Africanized Bees. They weren't released... they escaped. If we can't control arthropods... what makes you think we can control bacteria?
>Mars? How would we ruin mars? It's a wasteland
>as far as I see, and if we don't find life
>anywhere in it then I say it's free reign.
I agree. And THAT is were I'd have them do thier genetic research OR maybe the Moon or a Space Station.
>Survival of the fittest. If there is some
>organism on mars that may one day evolve into
>something sentient and wonderful then great,
>let it try. But if it's wiped out by expanding
>humans then it probably wouldn't have become
>so wonderful. Evolution teaches us that
>smart/savvy/stronger animals live and
>proliferate, while stupid/slow/weak animals
>die off and fade into the background or
>become extinct.
This statement fits into the Theory of Evolution nicely. Does it also mean that we are stupid and deserving of extinction if we create a virus or bacterium that annihilates us? I think the answer is yes.
>Maybe if a substantial portion of earths
>humans move to another planet then earth's
>ecology can start working harder and get back
>into the point of healthy.
Who's to say it hasn't happened before?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Aren't we being a little conceited in believing that it's so easy to set off an apocalypse? In working with a few hundred genes, would we create something that brings about the end of organic life as we know it on this planet?
And putting it into slightly closer perspective, will we achieve the same ends by using genetic manipulation in staple foods and livestock?
While it's easy enough to do harm to the ecosystem, I find it hard to believe that changing a few genes will have that much effect to such a complex and resilient system.
I remmember reading this article in discover a while back about someone creating a metabolism in the lab. Weird wild stuff!
> Scientists don't really have any training based on morailty.
Given that any religious leader likely to be consulted in a Western nation stands on a centuries-long tradition of condemning all rivals to eternal torment, one may well question the value of whatever morality-based training religious leaders are getting.
The primary group who should be consulted are biologists, who can at least venture a rational estimate of the effect of introducing an unrelated-to-any lifeform into our biosphere.
Beyond that, I half-way agree with your suggestion of consulting the philosophers. Yes, because we should get some estimate of the non-biological effect of the introduction, but no because I don't really believe any philosopher, past, present, or future, can really give a solid estimate on the effect.
But at least philosophers aren't likely to give answers based on delusions about what The Man (Who Lives on That Mountain in The Sky) would or wouldn't approve of.
As for my opinion (like anyone cares), I think caution is the watchword. Pardon my latent Luddite tendencies, but it seems that the history of modern technology is increasingly being a matter of cleaning up messes that we thought were good ideas at the time.
BTW, the introduction of autonomous robots is as likely to make our species obsolete as biotechnology is, though perhaps not with such dramatic suddenness as a biological oops. We should have a little chat about the future of robotics, too.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have had this sort of discussion with people before, and have encountered the "playing God" argument many times. What I always ask is what is the evidence that they have that we are playing God? Does their religion have a commandment saying that cloning or combining naturally occuring materials (like DNA) is sinful? What about grafting an orange tree to create a hybrid? In short, why do you draw the line where you draw it? I have no issue with religious convictions. What I find all too often, however, is people making decisions not based upon what their relgion actually says, but rather upon their opinions of what their religion should say.
I don't know of anything in any major religion which prohibits this sort of thing. Please, someone, enlighten me if I am incorrect. There are some moral issues and practical issues. These are principally issues of risk v. benefit, and in the case of cloning, the likelyhood of bringing humans in the world with fatal genetic flaws, which would likely happen in the early trials, I would think. That does not forbid cloning in and of itself, IMHO.
In fact, to go a bit further, what evidence do you have that we are not in fact, the end-all be-all species?
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
you obviously don't get my point. this is a major breakthrough, yes, but it doesn't help us engineer bacteria for x and y, when we already have bacteria to use for x and y. it does help us understand how genes react.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
bullshit. besides i've always wanted to reprogram the genes of a suitable host so that i can live >1000 yrs. if we can do it in the lab..why not ?
Well said. And I think many religious people will agree with you. I've read opinions on this before from some and was frankly surprised at their willingness to contemplate such an experiment. I'm often guilty, as many are, of letting the media associate religious with fanatical in my mind. I should know better.
:) Or maybe not if God plays along...
It's not like a major religious text has forbidden creation of life. If living things require a soul that only God can implant we're about to find that out maybe
From a purely secular standpoint it is absolutely critical that this organism be isolated, whether they think it can reproduce or not. Whether you're building self-replicating machines or organisms, you don't want to let them loose without exhaustive study, and a care for mutations. If that condition is satisfied I look forward to the results of the experiment.
I mean, after all, the Catholic Church is responsible for so much progress in the modern world, like the no contraception rule. and that had to make a few extra billon people. and at least one of them had to go into science, right?
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
hmm, how fun do you think debugging would be? especially considering mutation...
+&x
What the hell are the scientists doing asking for some idiotic, religious leader's blessing? Obviously, the scientists who are making life KNOW that most living organisms' DNA is UNIVERSAL - meaning that there is NO FAVORITISM, and thus, there is no god. It doesn't surprise me that they would go out and pull a stunt like this just so they can get some publicity out of uneducated (religious) people. It's quite sad really, especially since most people don't know that humans, in general, are the product of Homo Erectus (APE), and another superior species that most likely does not come from this world (thus, the saying, "mankind shall be made in OUR own image." I think it is everyone's RIGHT to create ANYTHING they so desire. If these scientists want to create life, then so be it. Most people in this pathetic society of ours, tend to forget that it is the people who are proclaimed as 'insane' who actually make SOMETHING in the world (Eric Drexler comes to mind) , whether it be bad or good, and not those who are proclaimed as 'Saints'. Religion and all those people who believe in that garbage, should be disposed of, in my opinion, because they are the ones who HALT or slow down the advance of technology. I want to see Nanotechnology within my lifetime, and I'll be damned if I let any stupid religious person with an IQ below 70 TELL ME what I can and can't do because it is supposedly 'not right'. If it is 'not right' like they proclaim it is, then mankind is an experiment gone bad.
_Why_ should the consult religous leaders at all? It is this very experiment which is going to prove them irrelevant once and for all. After all, if man can create life, then what makes "god" so special?
This may be the most interesting thing to happen in science since that apple caught Newton's attention. The only problem I can see is that the form of the "new" life will be so closely allied with the genetic structure of the experimental model that there may be some potential for crossover contamination. And, since the source organism lives in every human body, that constitutes a real turn of the roulette wheel. Which, I suppose, is why it SHOULD happen now, and with the strictest protocols under very bright lights.
As to the religious objections -- if there is a god (of any ilk), she put the possibility of this experiment into the original programming. We're just making it open source.
What sort of a world have we created for ourselves? Since when did religion become a dominant factor in our lives? We have screwed society up with preconcieved notions (dogmatism) brought from the dark ages - there should be no taboos in the modern world, otherwise we might as well crawl back into the primordial slime we came from. Ask yourselves these two vital questions - who plants thoughts into our minds, and for what purpose? Only then will you realise what role (and influence)we as individuals have in society. Open source society, thats what we want. Stop the Earth. I want to get off.
Revolution = Evolution
What is wrong with this?
What difference is there between making life and making elements through nuclear bombardment?
To me there is no difference in this, than say, spliting the atom or making a species become extinct. I don't recall hearing of scientists consulting religous leaders when they built the bomb, or made the passenger pigeon extinct, why should they now? You can't tell me that any religous leader has the wisdom or knowledge to know if this is right or wrong.
Man has been playing god for decades, this is no different.
A Genetic Engineer dies and goes to heaven to meet God. .. no . .get your own dirt.
Genetic Engineer So tell me God, what does a guy have to do to run this place?
GOD Can you create life?
Genetic EngineerYes!, I can, can you?
GodWith that God picks up a pile of dirt and with a little of this and a little of that....presto!..creates life!
Genetic Engineer Not to be out done, the GE bends over to pick up some dirt and god stops him and says:
God no
No where in the actual article itself does it say anything about seeking "approval" from anyone. The only thing close to what is implied by the slashdot snippet is the scientist's statement that there should be more public debate about the issue before going forward.
I know... I know... but I couldn't resist!
Oh, and you may have crawled from primordial slime but I most certainly did not! I crawled from primordial soup. Mmmm... Primordial Soup(tm) - it's good for you.
The Good Ole Days weren't really that good. I mean... it was DARK and all in them ages - right?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
A Genetic Engineer dies and goes to heaven to meet God.
Genetic Engineer: So tell me God, what does a guy have to do to run this place?
GOD: Can you create life?
Genetic Engineer:Yes!, I can, can you?
God:With that God picks up a pile of dirt and with a little of this and a little of that....presto!..creates life!
Genetic Engineer: Not to be out done, the Genetic Engineer bends over to pick up some dirt and god stops him and says:
God: no .. no . .get your own dirt.
As I've gathered, the right to do this is fundamental to Slashdot's existance. :)
I don't think scientists should try to create any type of life, even if it is simple. Creating simple life will quickly lead to making more and more complex life. And then the next thing you know we have synthetic humans all over the place. This is a mess, I love technology and I enjoy it helping my everyday life, but it needs to stop at some point. When man can create man, man has gone too far.
~Jay (Negative Seven)
I'm sorry about your friend (we have "road rage" beatings and even murder here in the UK too).
I agreed with everything you said about morals, nihilism etc but I feel there has to be a better, more rational way than institutionalised belief in being who may not exist at all. Are we doomed never to advance in our belief systems beyond medieval superstition?
Religion only works because most people are credulous fools (witness the resurgence of mysticism and all the "New Age" throwaway cults around these days). It just wouldn't survive if people were better educated. IMO increasing standards of education are precisely the reason why religion is dying out in the West.
Rather, teach philosophy and sociology in our schools as part of the basic curriculum. And vote in governments on a violent-crime-bashing, non-culturally-relativist platform.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
A few years ago, sitting in bio class, I started thinking to myself: an organism is just a giant computer, right? The DNA is the source code, transcription into polypeptide chains is compiling (assembling, really), protein folding is linking, and then the exe's (proteins, enzymes) run on the platform of cytoplasm. This anology can be extended further quite easily. Membrane-embedded receptor proteins are input, the golgi apparatus is output, the nervous system is the central bus, etc.
So, being a programmer, I wondered how hard it would be to "write" an organism from scratch, in assembly language (amino acid sequence). We'd have to understand all the layers above it, including transcription (we understand that pretty well) and protein folding (that one will take a lot of work still). Not to mention how tertiary/quaternary structure of proteins affects their function (a veeeery hard question, as of now). I thought that writing an original organism would be out of reach for at least 50, if not several hundred years.
What it looks like is that these scientists are not using assembly language, they're using pre-build [COM/CORBA/whatever] components. In fact, biology makes it much easier than would be expected: we don't even have to understand the precise functions and interactions (component interfaces) of each component. We just throw them all in a cell and let them mingle how they like, and it works! I never considered that in my bio class musings.
However, this still makes an interesting point: until we "write" the organism in DNA base sequences (machine language) or perhaps amino acid sequence (assembly language), we cannot say that this is an "original" organism, created by man. It's more like a microscopic Frankenstein, that is, built from pieces of other organisms.
Well, i can't verify your claim about new viruses being created already, not being an expert in this area, but i do know that most bio books list the viruses as being not-alive.
I think the rational for this is that viruses (virii?) do not contain the materials necessary for reproduction, rather, they have to use parts of other life forms to reproduce.
A real biologist should back me up on this, however.
This isn't news -- this is just Craig Venter (who despite his doctorate, is more a businessman than a scientist) chatting to the press. Craig absolutely loves seeing his image and words in print, and the press for its part is convinced that Venter is some sort of ubergenius and prints every word. The fact that there must be a minimum set of genes for life (and deriving a good set from highly degerate species like like Mycoplasmas) is not exactly an astounding realization and has been made before by many more qualified people than Craig, although they didn't run off to the BBC with it.
However, the claim that we are "at the verge of creating life" is about as meaningful as similar claims that we are at the verge of colonizing Mars or having real artifical intelligence. There are zillions of practical problems that need to be solved, and many of them seem quite intractable at present.
Remind me to remind you do to a web search when you're looking for something.
I don't want to get off topic, but...man continues to disgust me.
You and me both. Not so much because humans are arrogant and ignorant (although too often we are), but because there's too damn many of them. If we'd concentrate on quality instead of quantity like the K-strategists that we supposedly are, we wouldn't have such problems. But I digress.
Every day we cut down tons of trees for wood in order to keep industry alive.
The vast majority of the trees that are destroyed are not even used for wood. They're burned in order to clear the land to make room for more people. The wood isn't even used! I say again there's too damn many people on this rock!
When will we realize that these very trees are what supply us with oxygen?
It's not quite that simple. When forests (and kelp beds, and wheat fields) are growing, O2 is released into the atmosphere, and CO2 is removed and its carbon incorporated into the plants' structures. When they are burned, or decompose, or are harvested, O2 is removed from the atmosphere, and CO2 is released. It's a somewhat stable cycle. What really messes up the CO2/oxygen balance is not the destruction of forests (though that has an impact) but the burning of fossil fuels. Plants can grow back, but oil and coal don't. That carbon has been added to the atmosphere and it won't be coming out again.
While I agree with you that humans are disgusting, and that they're trashing the planet big-time, I don't think the answer to that is to put limits on science. More than anything else, science has the potential to get us out of this mess we're currently in, if we'll just stop putting short-term profits first and let it. For better or for worse, humans got the big brains. It's time we used them.
I find it rather amusing that this "Mycoplasma genitalium" they are using that is the simplest known form of life on earth is to be found in the "human genital tract".
I was actualy a little un-impressed when I read the article, they have found this poor little critter with just 480 genes, some of which they have judged as redundant. Reading between the lines i'll try to give an explenation on what they plan to do.
Having extracted the relevent peices of dna they will drop them in a test tube. Into the test tube will then go some of those weird protean machines you find in cells that takes dna and translates it into strands of protean. These starands of protean will then fold into lumps of protean (the very process that new IBM machine wants to simulate)that will procede to bounce around. The newly formed lumps of protean will stick together when random chance causes matching faces to meet and hey presto you a the functioning components of a cell.
Its actualy a little more complex than this but still decidedly un-impressive, basicly this could have been done already but they needed to find something simple enough to manage.
So will this lead to a new era of genetic enginearing? Potentialy yes, when we write software the easiest thing to do is take an existing program, strip out all the junk you don't want (or don't understand) until you have something basic to build on, the same applys to genetics.
Basicly all this 'consult the church' type stuff is almost certainly hype to get the press and public attention they want. The end result? well they get noticed and get the reasearch grant extension they need to actualy do this stuff (It's basicly all talk at the moment).
With 600 comments already in queue, I doubt anyone will see this, btu oh well...
1. The time to ask "Should we create life?" is not when the capability is at hand. The time to ask this question was about fifty years ago. If the answer is "No," the you avoid the research that can make it possible. Now it's too late to really consider the question. If something can be done, it will.
2. While this is an interesting advance, it is an expected and not very revolutionary one. Consider the following headline: "Carpenters learn to assemble prefab homes." That's what this seems to amount to. Scientists have identified already existing gense that control existing life. When they can engineer never-before-seen genes adn create life from those, I'll be a lot more impressed. That's be the headline that reads "Carpenters plant seed; grow homes in less than a day."
An adquate understanding of the genes will allow you to program it to replicate 10 times, and then die - just like your cells die.
This sentence illustrates your fundamental misunderstanding of biology. You can attempt to build an organism that reproduces 10 times and then fails to reproduce. But there will be mutations that mean that some of the decentants will not die.
Biology is not engineering and can never be engineering because life is inherently messy. Engineering is about understanding how a system with interact with its environment and designing with well understood margins of tolerance.
We know enough about biology to know that we can't completely predict how organisms will interact with one another and their environment and what will eventually result when things are released into the wild. Unanticipated things happen. If you think that we can, then you have deluded yourself.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
That's the most interesting thing I've read in this discussion. Too bad after 400+ comments everyone's out of mod points.
Thinking on the journey that we as a race have taken to come this far and looking ahead to how long it might take to get to the point where we might be able to create something as complex as ourselves and our world........maybe it is possible. This shows us that creation isn't magic and that is a very powerful thought. It might take us just as long again to create something worthwhile, but this step proves that it is a possibility.
Feels like a eureka moment for mankind. I don't think the same now as I did an hour ago. I hesitate to say "God is dead", but I will say that he's not as mysterious to me anymore, if he is.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
"There is more tree coverage now then there was in 1900, due to the fact that much less land is now in farming use. Those stone walls that run thru the woods were put there by farmers clearing land for planting, not by your "god"."
No, wrong. Or misleading, at the very best http://www.greenpeace.org/~forests/
ok, just to clarify. to the best of my understanding, the main religous argument against genetic science is that creating and/or modifying life itself is reserved for God, and man should not mess with it.
Therefore, if you are a scientist trying to create life, you are "playing god" becuase you are attempting god's work. But since you cannot Know what God knows you are, in comparison, just messing around in an amateur fashion, or "playing"
Just a little clarification. That's it. Personally I;m with the guy that quoted St. Augustine.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Before one of our all-too-few trips to the moon, a NASA engineer sneezed into a camera box. The camera went on a little trip, and stayed on the moon for several months. It was later brought back, and the damn little creepy-crawlies in the camera case came back to life.
:)
Yeah, you're right, a zealot with a lab can work wonders. 12 Monkeys was all too creepy, but it made a strong point.
As some conspiracy fans have pointed out too often, AIDS just might be... Well, hush! Eschelon and all.. But as you suggest, it may not be that hard. No genetic level engineering, just some splicing (cut&paste). Take one part common cold, one part AIDS and one part Ebola... Shake well and spray in a fine mist at O'Hare. That's a six month incubation period of rampant but unseen contagion, a two week immune system shut down, followed by a bleed-out in a 24 hour window.
After a year, the 'offending' group is gone. Then guess what? It's gone wild. A few oportunistic mutations, and it goes after the next broadest gene base. We're all toast.
Well, all of us except some slime inside an old camera case.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
First off, this isn't really creating life from scratch, what their doing is stripping down prexisting (in nature) plans for bacteria to the bare minimum and making the simplest bacteria they can. Their borrowing all the stuff like the genetic code, the ideas of DNA, RNA, proteins from nature. The organism they create will be very feeble since it only has the bare minimum to survive (if it really will survive at all). On the regilious note, rembember that the Human Race is supposed to be god's childern. Well Children grow up, at what else could god's children grow up to be except gods themselves. The next millenium is just the begin of humanity adultlence on its long road to goddom.
First off, I'm a firm believer in God (I'm Catholic). I'm kinda glad that that are seeking input from religious leaders. It's always best to hear all sides of an issue before you jump into things. Many of the posts above have said things like "I can't BELIEVE they're asking their PERMISSION to conduct research". Uh, it's called acting responsibly and I for one am glad to see some scientists realizing that their work could very well have adverse affects on humanity as we know it. While getting input from religious leaders great, I sure hope they don't stop there and discuss it in great lengths with their peers before going forward. Remember, many of you aren't believers (which is fine and dandy with me), but that doesn't mean that those who do are without opinion.
I, for one, would like to see them proceed. There is great knowledge I'm sure that could be gained from this. And, as long as it's conducted in a safe and responsible manner, we should be encouraging research like this instead of fearing it.
I don't think the scientific community gives a rat's ass about what the world's religious leaders
think. But they are smart enough to realize you don't want a bunch of crazy lunatics outside your building protesting that you are going against god's will. Personally I belive in god and think if god didn't want us to do something he would send us some other sign beside carzy lunatics. Sooner or later we are going to go down the road of creating a single cell organisme and I can already see the FOX special "When E. Coli attack".
There are a lot of benefits to this, the sooner we figure out how to creat genetic bacteria the sooner we can find cures for disases that require gene changes like Sickle Cell and Huntingtons disease.
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
- Impeded progress of Science in general.
- Denied the proof of glaring evidence.
- Slowed the course of Science hundreds of years.
- Instilled Fear and Hostility in the masses.
Why must these horrendous people keep on stagnating the progress of humanity? Why don't they just accept that what Science and Medicine does is research and developement? Why must they refuse to see the irrefutable proof of what Man has accomplished? In our hour of glory, we are struck down as dumb beasts to grovel at the feet of "the God that is love."Assuming that it is a virus that they create:
We would have no immunity to them.
They would have no idea (so to speak) how to hurt us.
For them to hurt us would be like a random fish disease to hurt us, but much much harder, because instead of being specialized for the wrong life form, it is not specialized for any life form.
I predict that 95% of the posts lambast anyone who believes in any kind of organized religion. I predict that the remaining 5% will attempt to defend it, but get drowned out in all the atheist posts. I predict that most of the "anti-God" posts will get marked as either: A. Funny or B. Insightful, while the "pro-God" posts stay the same. I predict that a lot of the religioius bashing will come from anonymous cowards. I predict at least 4 long and flam^H^H^H^debate filled threads to be generated, most of them mocking a pro-God post. I predict that few threads will discuss the actual implications of doing what this article suggests, and instead take up space making fun of religion. Which is actually sorta reduntant considering most people at Slashdot who post at the articles are atheists anyway. And I predict that all the above predictions will come true : )
Nah, it was inevitable. Picture this: We gradually teraform Mars... we add simple life forms at first and gradually increase the complexity... eventually we have a self-sustaining system on Mars... the creatures become "self-aware"... and we're worshiped as "Gods"... Science and technology will eventually create Heaven on Earth. People will live forever, all diseases will be cured, genetic manipulation will lead to more intelligent and creative humans, etc. Humans will travel to other planets. Wow. I wish I could see about 5000 years into the future.
Today was the last day of my Ethics class, and the topic of discussion was the ethics of technology. And boy, lemme tell ya, it ain't always fun being the smart-ass programmer guy with opinions. Turns out it was me and the cute girl who doesn't say much vs. the rest of the class. Real fun. The discussion on abortion was far less heated.
As a devout agnostic, I consider God to be the unknowable. No just what's over the next hill, but the Mystery itself. That being said, I think it's way too easy for people to say "that's God's business," as if the Bible contains a job discription and mission statement.
As far as the social implications go, the wish for slower technological growth is just that: a wish. People will continue to pry apart the nuts and bolts of the universe, and the people who are in charge of the distribution of new technology might as well be moderate to the point of brain death.
I, for one, would rather have Uncle Sam mucking about with genetic technology than some mullah who's reading into the Koran a bit too much (or a devout neo-Orthodox Greek feminist/part-time Marxist rebel, your radical minority here). I'm kinda happy with my bourgeois, liberal, feminist, psuedo-revolutionary, Mountain Dew, whitey, fucknut life. I don't want someone who believes very much in what somebody else told them to kill me, my friends, my family, and sure, even the assholes in the SUVs. No, I don't think the US is peacful, kind, impartial, or even good. But we are very slow to move, and we disagree with ourselves. Who better to have their hand on the trigger than a schizophrenic imperialist with delusions of grandeur and everything to lose?
I'm also not a big fan of the "it's not natural" arguments. Western thought tends to seperate Nature and Man, with disasterous results for Nature. I consider both myself and the keyboard I'm typing on to be natural. It's not like we create matter from a vacuum, right? It's not like we change the laws of physics to help us make things.
Everything you're not equipped with from birth is "unnatural" if you think about it. The "natural" place for a rock is on the ground, not in a human's hand, skinning an antelope. Sticks belong on trees or on the ground, not being used to thresh grain.
As humans, our nature is to fuck with things incessantly. Yes, we run into problems because of this, but it's the way we are. Pandora's box anyone?
Right. My thinkgeek.com order of Penguin caffeinated peppermints just came in, so I'm just a *wee* bit jumpy. Woo!
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
While I don't give a toss about religious objections to creating life (leaving aside the argument about whether this lot can actually walk the talk), I *do* find this kind of thing deeply scary.
Think BSE, think Ebola, think any number of fictional sc-fi rampant bugs.
Now think how easy it is to get things wrong -- for a metaphor, just look at the Morris Worm; not indented to run rampant and destructive, but it did nonetheless.
More knowledge is never a bad thing (whatever John Katz said t'other day) and if creating life from scratch can prove anything to us (possibly give us more clues about the origin of life on Earth), I'm all for it: but for pity's sake, kill it *as soon* as you've proved it's alive.
--
Sure. If, IF, there is an omnipotent God, then {s}he can just create the world all over again. And maybe in that release, the Covet They Neighbours Ass clause will be replaced with Thou Shalt Not Immitate Thy Maker.
Who says God can't learn from His mistakes?
There is a parable in the Bible, about a landlord who gave three servants an equal amount of wealth before going away. The first servant spent the money, the second burried it to keep it safe, and the third invested it and made more in the process.
The lesson is about investing one's gifts and talents for the greater glory of God. IMHO, (as humble as I can be - just in case) god is probably pretty damn proud of how we're doing with these neat little minds of ours.
Now, if we can just have enough self-restraint to not turn our creations on each other one more time... I'm sure God doesn't like it when his children fight. I hope we will use this to help one another. I hope we use this as another stepping stone out of the crib. Let's go terraform Mars.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
From reading biology-related stories on Slashdot and their attedant comments, I feel that there is this notion that all we need is the genetic information, and the rest will follow. But I think that the nature of life does not rest in nucleic acids, but in the unique self-assembling properties of certain organic compounds, much of which we know little about.
While I'm not saying that what these scientists propose to do is impossible, I really think that it is in the league of trying to figure out faster-than-light starflight. At least, if they are really intending to create life de novo, from a naked, chemically synthesized chromosome. For one thing, they will need to figure out a way to make incredibly long strands of DNA. Even if every single one of these critical genes were only 500bp long, this minimal genome would still require 150kbp, magnitudes of order longer than our current techniques can manage. But that would be the least of the difficulties. So far, we haven't gotten DNA to replicate itself without proteins. And, at least in existing organisms, you can't generate proteins without having pre-existing proteins. A classic chicken-and-egg problem. Add to this the fact that you can't have any metabolism anyway if you don't have a proper phospholipid bilayer, which also requires the presence of proteins to maintain the required internal environment, and it turns out to be quite a formidable task.
But if all these scientists are going to do is take these minimal genes out and resplice them into an optimized chromosome, suck out the DNA of an existing bacterium and plug-in their custom module, utilizing the existing replication, transcription, and translation machinery, can we really say this is creating life? Then this becomes no different from in-vitro fertilization and only a little more difficult than simply having sex.
I'm not Christian, but here it is: "Let them (humans) have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth." (Genesis, 1:24) That was God talking there, saying Man shall have control over all the life on Earth. Not only does He not think that it's not ethical, He commanded that we should have control over the rest of life. And I would think that that would include studying it that we could make it ourself.