American Scientist creates first "Synthetic Life Form"
Whoa.
The controversial feat, which has occupied 20 scientists for more than 10 years at an estimated cost of $40m, was described by one researcher as "a defining moment in biology".
Craig Venter, the pioneering US geneticist behind the experiment, said the achievement heralds the dawn of a new era in which new life is made to benefit humanity, starting with bacteria that churn out biofuels, soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and even manufacture vaccines.
However critics, including some religious groups, condemned the work, with one organisation warning that artificial organisms could escape into the wild and cause environmental havoc or be turned into biological weapons. Others said Venter was playing God.
The new organism is based on an existing bacterium that causes mastitis in goats, but at its core is an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory.
Anyone remember the movie "The Blob"?
This is interesting in that it creates th epossibility of owning a species. If I create a good, in our current capitalist economy, I can put a patent on it and ensure that no one could use this good without giving me some lucre.
I am not so worried about scientists playing god as I am about their investors playing bio-slavery.
It is very scary stuff. ETC Group has a good analysis, which we published this morning: American scientist Craig Venter creates and sells self-replicating synthetic life, and a video that explains "Synthia".
This is interesting in that it creates th epossibility of owning a species. If I create a good, in our current capitalist economy, I can put a patent on it and ensure that no one could use this good without giving me some lucre.
I am not so worried about scientists playing god as I am about their investors playing bio-slavery.
Think of Monsanto trying to own the world's source of nourishment.
Shouldn't access to healthy, nourishing, life sustaining food be an inalienable right, rather than a patented "manufactured" commodity bought and sold on the market to the highest bidder?
The principles of the kapitalists being: "If you don't have or can't earn enough money to buy food, then you don't deserve to live."
I have no idea what this even is, or looks like, but I just read that Angelina Jolie paid $50K in exchange for the first right of refusal to adopt it.
I hope our friend Fidel reads this link. I think it would interest him greatly:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/20/attack-of-the-cyborg-insec...
I'm sure the military applications are mind-boggling...
As well as every other kind of application.
I like physicists. Their discipline has been around for a long time, and they've got used to paradigms being upended. It's given them a certain humility, best expressed by Arthur Eddington's saying, "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." The disciplines that have really taken off in the last 20 years, however, life and computer sciences, are flushed with their early triumphs and not at all averse to telling everyone that they've solved everything. Every month some eminent PhD who should know better publishes a new pop-scientific tome telling us that the mind is basically a Commodore 64 or that evolutionary psychology explains everything from our choice of mate to our choice of music. Into this whirlpool of hubris and beckoning money you drop Craig Venter, a guy who makes Francis Crick and Richard Dawkins seem like models of wry self-effacement. Of course he's going to try to invent an artificial life form. And of course he'll trumpet his success even if it isn't quite clear that he's done so. As my mum used to say, "There's no second money in the Hall of Fame," and Venter is determined to buy or gatecrash his way in.
Here's the problem. Life sciences have now left the descriptive phase and entered the engineering phase. The public, or some of it, is deeply suspicious of GMO's, BST, and all the other wonders of the last 20 years. But the engineering goes on. And these are people without engineer's training. Put it this way: Murphy's Law isn't just the explanation for why you run out of toner just when you need to make 125 copies. It's a guiding principle of engineering. If something can go wrong, IT WILL. If excess traffic loosens the rivets in a bridge, then you'd better plan a way to detect the early symptoms of rivet loosening, have a fix ready for when it happens, and a fail-safe mechanism in case a whole bunch loosen at once. This sort of thinking doesn't seem to be taking place in the life sciences. We hear some bland talk of containment and a lot of reassurances that it's all perfectly safe. And so we loose alien life-forms into a world made up of intricately connected webs that, like a spider's, vibrate all over at a tiny disturbance to the farthest corner.
Mark my words, there'll be tears before bedtime.
I hope our friend Fidel reads this link. I think it would interest him greatly:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/20/attack-of-the-cyborg-insec...
Come on, you "antiwar" student leftists and libertarian activists – let’s get the academy out of the trenches, and back into the classroom. It’s time to sever the ties between the War Party and America’s universities – and, in the meantime, let’s make sure those cyborg insects stay in their cages.
Thank you. FrmrSldr. It's a good article that everyone should read. Ralph Nader and others are also appalled by the joint efforts of US universities and military toward basic research of new and deadlier than ever WMD of all manner. And if US whistle blower Sibel Edmonds is correct, there will probably be dirty politicians ready to sell the latest technological menace to mankind to the highest bidders. The struggle for democracy continues.
War, children, it's just a shot away...
And from DARPA again, Quantum entanglement in a real biological system found
Yes, computers with military applications to calculate missile trajectory vectors in record time, we can be sure. Or?...
Are these same evil bastards capable of doing basic research that may unlock the mysteries of the human mind and consciousness? Why can't they just lose the military connection altogether and do serious research on a full-time basis for the public good?
The New York Times finds that safety standards in GMO labs are less stringent than those in car plants. Sure, Dr Venter, here's your permit. After all, what's the worst that could happen?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/business/28hazard.html?hp
The New York Times finds that safety standards in GMO labs are less stringent than those in car plants. Sure, Dr Venter, here's your permit. After all, what's the worst that could happen?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/business/28hazard.html?hp
“We don’t know how many Becky McClains there are,” said Adam M. Finkel, who worked for OSHA both as a regional administrator and a director of health standards. “Everybody knows there’s new stuff being made every day that’s incredibly dangerous, but nobody knows how to get their arms around it.”
Beautiful.
Craig Venter explains the synthetic cell
Is this really news? I have been working under the assumption that the entertainment industry (along with the "beauty" industry) has, in conjunction with the plastic surgery wing of the medical-industrial complex, been creating synthetic life forms for years.... designer organisms indeed!
Spooky. In similar news, UCS researchers in California say they have created early stage, 8-layer multicellular retinas from embryonic stem cells. They hope to be able to do retina transplants for people with macular degeneration and even RP. This is majorly good news for people who are losing their eye sight due to retinal deterioration, injuries and whatever.
The Singularity is Near the movie
A true story about the future starring Tony Robbins, Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey DeGrey, Al Dershowitz, Alvin Toffler, and an all-star cast of futurists