Scientists create Synthetic DNA!
by Muhammad on January 28, 2008
in Uncategorized
The move, which comes after five years of research, is seen as the penultimate stage in the endeavor to create an artificial life form based entirely on a man-made DNA genome — something which has tantalized scientists and sci-fi writers for years.
“Through dedicated teamwork we have shown that building large genomes is now feasible and scalable so that important applications such as biofuels can be developed,” said Hamilton Smith, from the J. Craig Venter Institute, in the study published in Science.
The research has been carried out at the laboratories of the controversial celebrity scientist Craig Venter, who has hailed artificial life forms as a potential remedy to illness and global warming.
However, the prospect of engineering artificial life forms is highly controversial and is likely to arouse heated debate over the ethics and potential ramifications of such an advance.
I was thinking of Aldous Huxley’s brave New World as soon as I read the Title of this article. Given mankind’s recent tendency towards wars and lust for power, I can only guess as to where this will go when it falls into the wrong hands. The way corporations had rushed to patent every little change they made in the DNA of organisms, I’m thinking the next step would be exactly what was mentioned in a Brave New World.
A world where you can order a fully customised labourer, complete with no ambition for authority, intelligence capped at a particular level to ensure optimal functionality for the task he was bought for and unable to think further than what he /she was created to do.
I hope mankind, has some sense of responsibility with this.
Technorati Tags: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, DNA, Scientists, Responsibility
