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."

After a week?

[jabber]

Just one week?

Seven days?

Interesting. Did he rest on the seventh?

This is a truly amazing, fascinating topic. The scope of reactions across the /. 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!

Maybe we are ready for this after all.

Re:Too much

[rhyac]

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[quadong]

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.

Re:Revised Eddition

[Pfhreakaz0id]

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....

Re:Too much

[PG13]

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.

Re:Life finds a way.

[say-tan]

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?

Re:Life finds a way.

[say-tan]

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.

Religion lack any competence whatsoever here

[Morgaine]

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.

Re:Engineering Life is EXTREMELY important

[gad_zuki!]

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.

Re:Could or Should?

[QuMa]

Allow me. :-)

Question 1: Why *DO* you believe in god?

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[quadong]

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.)

My parents created me, what's the big deal here?

[jquiroga]

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.

Waxing Religous

[PG13]

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[quadong]

"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.

Re:Life finds a way.

[mOdQuArK!]

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!

Re:Then whats the point of sex?!

[Ferzerp]

"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.

On this note

[VWswing]

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?

Wow. Shock. Dismay

[Bandman]

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.

But is this really that exciting?

[VWswing]

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.

Re:Could or Should?

[QuMa]

"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....

Re:wow.. already!

[QuMa]

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!

Re:Just a thought.

[gorilla]

Viruses not the earliest forms of life, they are thought to be later developments. You see, viruses cannot reproduce on their own, they need the existing reproduction mechanisms in cells, which would not of course exist in the early days.

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.

Re:creator of life == God?

[QuMa]

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.

Re:Here's some more relevant Scripture.

[QuMa]

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?

Re:not funny

[quadong]

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.

THIS IS A JOKE!

[Mes]

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.

Re:Obligatory Frankenstein Reference

[quadong]

Ditto. No one cares that you beat him, Mr Signal 11. Comments were made for discussion, debate and enlightenment, not karma and first posts.

Re:right on moral judgment [off topic]

[ralphclark]

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

Re:Distrust

[ralphclark]

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

Re:Creator of life != God

[QuMa]

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.

Dependencies of morals on religion

[dublin]

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..)

Re: Could or Should

[QuMa]

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?

Re:If we create it ...

[QuMa]

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?

Re:A rebuttal.

[Yebyen]

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)

Re:Here's what I suggest you do

[quadong]

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.

Re: Could or Should

[QuMa]

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?

Re:On this note

[QuMa]

The ones I've learnt in biology are:

-Sensing (must be a better word for it, can't think of it now)
-growth
-reacting
-development
-reproduction
-absorbing nutrients
-putting out the garbage (bad translation, but you know what I mean: ability to kick stuff it doesn't like in its body out of his body (digested food remains etc))

I can't think (/have never heard of) the other one.

(Just to keep things clear, I think life doesn't exist as anything other than a couple of chemicals, and there is no precise border when something is life).

Re:Here's some more relevant Scripture.

[QuMa]

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).

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[QuMa]

I've been thinking about it, and all I can honestly think of is keeping libraries containing very biased books with money conned from the peasants. Care to enlighten us with other examples?

why are people worried about this?

[yuriwho]

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!

Re:Distrust

[Saige]

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.
---

Re:You won't be God

[QuMa]

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).

Sort it out...

[Jon Peterson]

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.

Re:Hate ta burst yer bubble, but...

[evilpenguin]

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?

Re:Moral judgements

[ralphclark]

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 [slashdot.org]). 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

Re:creator of life == God?

[QuMa]

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.

hehe

[delmoi]

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

Re:You won't be God

[QuMa]

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? :-)

Re:"broader debate," not "consult religious leader

[QuMa]

Your right. However, this kind of discussion never hurts.

Re:WTF?

[Kintanon]

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

Re:Life finds a way.

[ralphclark]

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

Re:I can see it now....

[Kintanon]

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

Re:On this note

[babbage]

I'm sure this comment is going to be hopeless lost in the maelstrom, but Miller was quickly and interesting superceded. Around the same time as his lightning -> amino acids experiment, a UCLA biologist named Sidney Fox ran experiment in which amino acids are created from simpler chemicals (formaldehyde, ammonia, carbon dioxide), using a simpler setup (hotplate only, and given enough time it would work at room temperature), and to better results.

Fox' experiment produced not only amino acids, but simple proteins and basic cellular structures. That's right -- cells. Were they alive? Who knows. But I've done the experiment myself, in his lab, with his help, and it's dirt easy, and it produces great results.

He called the cells "proteinoid microspheres", and they followed some parameters for living things -- metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, etc. That might or might not mean anything -- fire has the same properties after all -- but it certainly felt like Fox was on the right track. So much so in fact that he had the opportunity to present his results before the Pope on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, Dr Fox died a couple of years ago and no one ever really learned about his work. Too bad.

For more on Dr Fox, take a look here [holysmoke.org] (an article) and here [comstar.ru] (a thumbnail biography).

Anyhow, the point of bringing all this up is that this research really isn't anything new -- just the synthesis of several modern trends that would have happened sooner or later regardless, like cloning.

Darwin? I don't think so.

[rangek]

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.

oh, terrific...

[devphil]

...something /else/ that will have all the brains required to spam Usenet.

Too much

[blaker612]

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

creator of life == God?

[poopie]

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!

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[Mock]

I believe in God, and I don't really think
that we should create life.


Why not?
On what do you base this judgement?
Where is it written that we should not create life?

It's the same old story time and time again.
Once, our religious leaders told us that it is not our place to study the heavens.
Once, our religious leaders told us that it is not our place to use glasses that lie (telescopes and microscopes).
Once, our religious leaders told us that it is not our place to dissect human beings.
Once, our religious leaders told us that it was not our place to go to the southern hemisphere, where great beasts and antipodes lived.

And so here we go for another spin... Sad, really.

Re:Could or Should?

[jd]

That depends on what constitutes God, or the Higher Power of your understanding.

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.

Now this is just plain wrong.

[rangek]

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[debrain]

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.

I'm not sure what we should call life. We create life when we procreate, when we allow animals (pets) to breed, when we drop crap on the ground that spawns mold, when we go into a crowd, knowingly sick, and spread disease (or have sex without protection).

The boundary between this and creating life from dust is a bit different. But is it really that different -- we simply do not know whether the life we create will be good or bad. We knowingly spawn all sorts of life we deem "bad". What we do not know is whether creating life will be good or bad life until after the fact. But we do know that we will learn from it, good or bad. That might be a bad thing, as all kinds of "evils" may spawn from synthetic life.

But my guess is that the good intentions of the many will overcome the many possible bad outcomes. Who are we to say what is good and bad? We appear to have been rewarded for the search of truth and knowledge, the exploration and exploitation of lands and resources. Or so we think. Some lessons are only possible by nature's trials.

I think, and I might be very wrong about this, but I think that this sort of life will be created, approval of common ethics or not.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Engineering Life is EXTREMELY important

[xtal]

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!

Religious leaders have the answers?!

[root]

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.

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[Disco Stu]

What is the connection between "creating life" and "playing god"?

Good question. I think the answer to that question is another question: Why do we want to create life? I think every scientist involved ought to ask him/herself that question.

Of course, I also think that scientists should be required to study philosopy before they can get their PhDs. =)

As I understand them, the commandments need some common sense applied to them in order to mean anything. For instance, 'shalt not kill' must mean 'shalt not kill any humans', as it is clear that killing plants and animals for food is okay.

Certainly. Of course, they also need some context applied to them. To comment on the example you gave: some translations (King James, RSV, a couple others) use the word "kill." Others use the word "murder." If you go back to the original Hebrew, you will find that it was closer to "murder".

Depends on your definition of God

[drox]

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.

Re:Could or Should?

[Capt Dan]

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.

Re:creator of life == God?

[Hrunting]

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...

Actually, in the wake of all this progress in genetics and films like Jurassic Park, religious participation has actually been on the rise. Sure, some of it is due to millenial fears and some due to an increase in breeding in the Southern United States, but for the most part, people say they are simply scared of the direction that the world has taken. Remember, back in the 60s, when a lot of these people were growing up, atomic bombs created fantasy mutants that ate people. Star Trek envisioned the Eugenics Wars of the mid-90s that, although they never happened, were based on a very real fear that has only gotten more real.

I think people turn to God now because of situations like this, because God is a stabilizing force, real or not. What God represents to people is different based on the individual, but the idea that something is there that controls the unknown, that provides reason and sanity to processes that people can't quite understand (how many people have ever prayed to the Windows god?) is common throughout history. How life works is one of those unknowns and now, to suddenly say that it is known, means a little piece of God dies. Rather than deal with this, people turn to God so that he won't die and they'll continue to have this stabilizing presence.

We're going to understand how this all works some day, I have no doubt, and we won't be gods when we can teach it to our little kids via hyperlight networks. Why is that? Because we won't ever understand why it works that way and exactly why our universe is the way it is. Leave that to the theologians and let's get on with our discovery of how things work the way they do.

Re:Why should they care what religious nuts think?

[MillMan]

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.

RE: Could or Should

[borzwazie]

Warning: The following opinion states my point from a religious aspect. If you don't want to be exposed to religious beliefs, go no further.

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[Frater 219]

"Can Victor control his Monster?"

If you recall the original story, it was not Victor Frankenstein's lack of control over his artificial son which made the "monster" become hostile: it was first his revulsion and abandonment, and later his refusal to give his creation an equal for a wife.

What Frankenstein failed to do had nothing to do with control and everything to do with responsibility for the consequences of his actions. He was afraid and disgusted by what he had created, and so he ran off.

Yes, that's right -- Victor Frankenstein was a deadbeat dad.

So the question for the TIGR researchers is this: What are the consequences and risks of creating life at this level? Clearly, a baby mycobacterium is not going to require a daddy in order to grow up to be a socially well-adjusted mycobacterium, so Herrdoktorprofessor Frankenstein's particular act of irresponsibility is irrelevant here. It seems to me that the worst risk is that the newly-engineered bacterium might either be infectious and deleterious itself, or else that it might mutate into something dangerous.

What precautions are being taken against this risk? I would hope that they are conducting their experiments in clean-room environments and taking all reasonable steps to ensure that their engineered microbes do not escape. They should make sure that if they give their little baby bacteria to anyone else, that the recipient also knows how to care for them (i.e. how to contain them). Furthermore, they should have a means of reliably killing the bacteria when they're done with them, to make sure they do not spread into the wild.

Re:Why should they care what religious nuts think?

[JamesSharman]

God is CmdrTaco and he speeks to us with his holy profits Hemos and Roblimo. His instructions as to what we should and should not believe are comunicated by means of those news items that are or are not posts. Remember, it is easier to run an NT5 binary on debian linux than it for an un-worth news item to pass through the gates of slashdot.

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

Re:Too much

[Mr. Mikey]

What - "There are some things that Man was not meant to Know." ? Spare me - sounds like a line from a second-rate Frankenstein movie. First, you complain about man "assuming the role of God." Which God? What evidence do you have to support the assertion that said God exists (note that I am not taking a position as to God's existence or nature)? Then you say that "man continues to disgust me". Self-loathing, perhaps?

We, as always, should proceed with caution and forethought. When we create new lifeforms, we should consider the ethical ramifications first. No question. However, you want science to only go so far, and no farther. Who draws that line? And, how are you going to enforce said limitation? I think Galileo said it best: "I refuse to believe in a God that would grant us intelligence and curiousity, and then have us forego their use." (BTW, if I have the quote wrong, I'd appreciate a reference to the correct version). If, you have a particular diety you believe created the Universe and has some Plan for us, think long and hard before you start trying to speak in His/Her name.

Re:Why should they care what religious nuts think?

[MTDilbert]

I can't believe the reaction here. Why ask religious leaders? Hmmm...

• 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.

If we create it ...

[Hrunting]

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[Disco Stu]

trying to learn, and unlock the secrets of life is *not* playing God

I forget who said it (I'm thinking St. Augustine), but one of my favourite quotes is "Let know man think he can know too much about the Book of God's Words or the Book of God's Works."

"The Book of God's Words" is, of course, referring to the Bible.
"The Book of God's Works" is referring to the natural world.

In other words, this is a theologian saying that science (the study of the natural world) is not only ok, but that it is glorifying to God.

Of course, if you listen to many of the posters here, rather than to history, you would find this hard to believe.

House !== Blueprint

[Draxinusom]

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.

How it should be done.

[Fenmere, the Worm]

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 FtW001

Under 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

a wee reality check

[whosyerdaddy]

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[Jherico]

Of course I see differences, but not neccessarily ones that neccesitate getting the blessing of the Pope or any other religious leader.

Personally I disagree strongly with a lot of current religious opinion on the standard method for creating life.

As for whether we are wise enough to know when we should go about any scientific endeavour, my own view of history shows me that if left up to the church, the answer will always be "Not yet", because scientific advancement always seems to come at the cost of religious dogma, so the church never looks favorably on it.

Who then is to decide when we are wise enough? If not god, or its supposedly appointed diplomats here on earth, then ultimately the choice cannot but be left up to the people who have the capability to make any advancement.

Personally I think the willingness on the part of the scientists to open the debate shows tremendous wisdom in and of itself. I just think its too bad that somebody apparently things religious leaders are synonymous with moral or ethical leaders.

On the subject of hindsight, I'd be interested in where in history you think that it might have been better to have waited. Personally I see tragedies where science was held back far too long. At technologies current pace, people born a few generations from now might need never die. Had the church not held back science in so many ways for so long, we might be that immortal generation.

Also on the subject of hindsight, one must realize that we of this world are not all of one mind. As such, just because one group of scientists decide not to pursue a particular path of knowledge doesn't mean it won't be pursued. And on the principle of the enemy you know versus the enemy you don't I'd rather see these scientists do it than a team in a biowarfare lab that I won't see. Perhaps that latter team has already followed this path and created a deadly bio-weapon that can kill anyone, say all the clearly inhuman monsters walking among us with brown eyes. Our best defense to the release of such a weapon would be the open and disseminated knowledge of how one might make a custom virus to combat the weapon. That is, perhaps to have followed the path of knowledge in the open.

Re:Absurd!!

[LongShip]

Indeed, this is totally absurd

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.

Re:Too much

[jkeltner]

This argument seems to me to be somewhat self-defeating. I mean, if we really had God-given limitations, would we be able to extend them at all. If God didn't intend for us to be able to create life in the laboratory, then he would not have made it possible for us to do so. The entire nature of the limits God places on man is that man can not break them, even if he tries. I agree that mankind is not always as intelligent as we could be, and that we should be more forward-looking. However, I do not think that any of that necessitates putting bounds on what we think science can teach us and where we should let it lead us. It just requires caution and good ethical judgement about how we should use the knowledge we develop. Man may not be the be-all end-all species, but there is no reason not arbitrarliy set limits on what man can and can not do. If man was not meant to be able to do something, he simply won't be able to do it. Let God set those limits, and man discover them.

Re:danger of optimizing life?

[ralphclark]

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

Re:On this note

[vivekb]

PBS once again has the answers to everything [pbs.org].

To summarize:

1929: theory that early atmosphere had no oxygen
1952: theory refined to postulate components of early earth (stellar byproducts, mostly)
1953: Stanley Miller reproduced those initial conditions in a container, threw in some boiling water and zapped it with a million volts. After a one weeks, he had a bunch of different amino acids.

Could or Should?

[dmorin]

Although I hate to quote Jurassic Park, I liked it when Jeff Goldblum said "We were so busy wondering whether we could that we didn't stop to think if we should."

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?

Re:Why should they care what religious nuts think?

[Nose]

Umm... well, first of all, religious != nut despite what the media may say (but we know they are ALWAYS correct, right?) If you apply the same ignorant stereotype, then every Arab is a terrorist, all policemen constantly exercise brutality, , etc, etc.

The point however is not that they are asking religious leaders what they think per se, but for once getting a little bit of public debate on an issue before advancing farther in an area of science that the majority of the people in the world will never really understand. Don't get me wrong, Im all for scientific advancement and discovery. All too often, and especially these days, research seems to barrel headlong down the road with no heed of future consequences. Where was it said, maybe star trek, that the one of the most dangerous things is someone who has some technology or knowledge that is beyond their understanding.

I don't have a problem with microbes to break down sewage or that will eliminate landfills, or break hydrogen out of water for fuel. What I do worry about are designer bacteria for infecting people, or something that starts out well meaning (maybe that sewage bacteria mutates into the a modern black death). Once these designer organisms get out, and you know they will, these are the same corporations, after all, that dump their toxic waste into our water supply; thats it, you can't get them back, and you can't control what they will do. It is a Pandora's, and science opens them often enough without any sort of debate, leaving everyone else with the concequences, for better or worse. It is great that we are discovering these things. But we need to think not just about what this or other discoveries will do for the present, but how it may affect people generations from now. As wonderful as it is, I applaud them for realizing that science is not the only thing in the world that matters.

Nose

Just a small step on a long path...

[bonabo]

This follows in straightforward fashion from previous work. The complete genomic sequence of 64 microbes has been determined, all in the past half dozen years. The sequenced microbes typically have between 500 and a 5,000 genes ( Lyme disease spirochaete, Borrelia burgdorferi [nih.gov] Mycoplasma genitalium [nih.gov] b acterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae [nih.gov]). Several of the smallest genomes are around 500 genes, showing that this number is the minimum needed for a microbe. It turns out that these microbes don't have the same set of 500 genes. Each orgamism has the 'core' genes needed to stay alive, plus a some organism specific genes, those needed to survive in its particular environment. By looking for the smallest common set, the 'core' set of genes to create a living organism can be found (a bit difficult, since the function of some of these genes is not known, and two with no obvious similarity may perform the same function in different organisms). This seems to be what has been done, it was an obvious next step in studying these genomes.

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

Another interesting article on this type of thing.

[twjordan]

I remmember reading this article [208.226.13.177] in discover a while back about someone creating a metabolism in the lab. Weird wild stuff!

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[sterno]

If you believe that there is a creator, it is a logical assumption that this creator was the one who gave us all minds. Why is it wrong for us to use our minds? Where does it say in any religious text, "Thouh shalt not create life in a laboratory!"

Personally I don't think this is a matter of religious morality. We should use those same minds that can create life in a lab to ask ourselves, "is this a good idea?", or, "So what are we going to do with this life in a petrie dish anyhow?"

The problem is that we have this belief that creating technology without contemplating its implications for our society is okay. The mere act of inventing something implies it eventual usage, and so we must decide whether it is worth going down that road. Frankly I don't think God cares if we create life or invent nuclear weapons. I think we should however!

---

Re:On this note

[HoppingCow]

Here's a nice interview with the man himself, along with a decscription of the famous experiment.

http://sciences.homepage.com/miller. html [http]

Enjoy!

Re:Crazy!!

[ftill]

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.

It's funny, laugh

[Money__]

Joke

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 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 . .get your own dirt.

:)

wow.. already!

[sesquiped]

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.

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[Jherico]

I don't really think that we should create life

Clue Flash! Any sufficiently mature man and woman can create life. The big difference here is that team of scientists might actually have a better understanding of the ramifications of their actions that say your average inner city teenage mother.

How far exactly do you want technology and science to push ahead? Only as far as the church wants? Were such an attitude more prevalent, the sun might still be revolving around the earth, at least in the minds of we poor humans.

What exactly makes the creation of life the sole purbiew of any supposed god. Particularly what differentiates it from the ability to travel to the heavens, something which before this century was only in his domain?

I don't believe in god, but I do believe its man's responsibility to know as much as he can about himself and the world around him.

Typical Marketing

[JamesSharman]

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).

Re:Engineering Life is EXTREMELY important

[xtal]

That's all fine and dandy, but I think that this is going to be done no matter who thinks it's bad - and for that reason, it's important that the "free" (speech :) world do it before the "insert godless evil empire here" does it - Imagine a world where only Hitler discovered Nuclear Weapons? Or only Russia developed the Hydrogen bomb from it's atomic bomb research?

Nobody said jack about what I concider to be the most henious of all human inventions - Genetic Warfare - e.g., don't like -insert group opposed to your moral views here-? Well, here's a nasty little bug that kills them and not "us". There were several announcements in previous months that many nations possess this capability, namely Israel, and I'm sure that the USofA has some nasties as well. There's a biological warfare research facility around Ottawa, Canada, too. Er, I mean, biological warfare countermeasures, that's it.

My point is that someone, somewhere, somehow is going to do this. I have this gut feeling that it's going to be easier than a lot of people think. The big discussion isn't going to be if. It's going to be who, for what, and why. Is life really all that special? I think that it might just be more aptly described as a propertly of Carbon, a branch of organic chemistry. That's my "moral" view on the topic - we're not so special, and little that humanity has done would change this in my view. We still butcher and kill babies in the name of "insert diety here". Are those the actions of enlightened, noble, beings?

Technology doesn't respect Morals, either. Individuals need to use technology in an ethical manner, and I don't see how a species that has thermonuclear, biological, and chemical weapons locked n' loaded is in any position to argue morals.

Let's use this technology to improve the condition of those living on the planet - and try to direct it's development so we don't all suffer. Sticking our collective heads in the sand wouldn't be such a bright idea.

Kudos..

Two points

[dillon_rinker]

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."

Re:Wow. Shock. Dismay

[alhaz]

My HS bio teacher was a bit overqualified for the position - vietnam medic, former FDA biogeneticist, etc. taught 'cause he liked to, could have been raking in 6 figure salaries if he wanted to.

So i asked him the science vs. god thing.

He told me that it's exactly the opposite - that the more he discovers about biological systems, the more he's *certian* that a higher being had a hand in creation.

Food for thought, I guess.

Technology, Nature, and God

[Coda]

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!

Re:Engineering Life is EXTREMELY important

[Saraphale]

Life is fundamentally a moral, hence religious, issue.

You seem to be implying that there can be no morals without religion. A person's religion can define what their morals are, but doesn't define whether or not they actually have morals. IME, a religious person of any level of learning is either a philosopher, or only able to reiterate the static teachings of their own group. Hence, it would be more sensible to seek the advice of a large sample of ethics philosophers; the religious viewpoint would naturally be included by the people consulted who were religious, yet a more balanced perspective would be achieved overall because of the wider sampling taken of people who specialise in this subject.

In addition, if they are interested in getting opinions as to whether they should continue or not, they should also consider taking a poll of laypeople. To single out a particular group for questioning, simply because of religion, is either displaying the prejudices of the people involved in the research, or is a crude PR move.

They are things a Deity would be interested in (if the Deity is not amoral, obviously) hence they are religious issues.

They are not *solely* religious issues, however. Might I ask: In the event that the subject of artificially creating life is not mentioned in religious texts, won't the response the researchers get simply be the private view of the person they ask, and not be representative of the "Will of God", or the rest of their religious group?

Everything gets abused by someone somewhere along the line. And when it comes to life itself, it is something that should be very carefully considered first.

I agree completely. The ethics of what they are wishing to do is not the whole picture - imho they should also be questioning people in other fields to examine the possible physical effects of such a new life form.

Simon.