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  • #1

    Artificial Life

    The Times & The Sunday Times
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article7132299.ece
    News and opinion from The Times & The Sunday Times



    Scientists have created synthetic life in the laboratory, in a feat of ingenuity that pushes the boundaries of humankind's ability to manipulate the natural world.

    Craig Venter, the biologist who led the effort to map the human genome, said today that the first cell controlled entirely by man-made genetic instructions had been produced.

    The synthetic bacterium, nicknamed Synthia, has been hailed as a step-change in biological engineering, allowing the creation of designer organisms with specialised functions that could never have evolved in nature.


    After we have turned this corner, what comes next - designer bacteria to solve all our energy needs, or designer plague to reslove the overpopulation issues efficiently...
    Socrates: "Good is That at which all things aim, If one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good." Brian: "Romanes eunt domus"
    GW 2013: "and juistin bieber is gay with me and we have 10 kids we live in u.s.a in the white house with obama"
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  • #2
    Guess Ben will be very interested in this tech - a virus that could kill off all non catholics
    With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

    Steven Weinberg

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    • #3
      I'm surprised this news hasn't stimulated more responses. This has to be one of the most significant (and scary) milestones in scientific history. Or am I over-reacting?

      Perhaps the ho-hum response is because it has been pre-empted so often in sci-fi and futurology?

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      • #4
        I doubt you are over-reacting... dependable on how difficult this will be with future developments, you just need a wealthy and powerful destructive person to do some serious damage... may be a lot easier than to design than nukes, and it could easily be more deadly.

        On the other hand, the possibilities to design some sun energy collecting/rubbish recycling bacteria may make our lives a lot better.
        Socrates: "Good is That at which all things aim, If one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good." Brian: "Romanes eunt domus"
        GW 2013: "and juistin bieber is gay with me and we have 10 kids we live in u.s.a in the white house with obama"

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        • #5
          I, for one, Welcome our new Bacterial Overlords.
          I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.
          [Brandon Roderick? You mean Brock's Toadie?][Hanged from Yggdrasil]

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          • #6
            All life is artificial...
            Monkey!!!

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            • #7
              I'd welcome Chinese overlords, bacterial ones... not so much
              Socrates: "Good is That at which all things aim, If one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good." Brian: "Romanes eunt domus"
              GW 2013: "and juistin bieber is gay with me and we have 10 kids we live in u.s.a in the white house with obama"

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              • #8
                What about Bacterial Chinese overlords?
                Last edited by N35t0r; May 21, 2010, 14:42.
                Indifference is Bliss

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                • #9
                  What about bacteria that only kill nonChinese?
                  Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
                  The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
                  The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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                  • #10
                    I'm not sure about OFITG, but that'd mean I wouldn't be able to welcome any overlords, on account of being dead.
                    Indifference is Bliss

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