Said the J. Craig Venter Institute research team - and there was life.
While the human race, or at least Homo Americanus is preoccupied with destroying itself with it's pet mythologies and peremptory political philosophies and general stupidity, a few of us have been at work actually creating something that constitutes a giant leap for mankind. It's always a very few, isn't it?
A team of American scientists have succeeded in animating a cell with a synthetic genome made out of raw chemicals. The implications of this huge accomplishment are beyond anyone's ability to foresee and I'm not talking only about the ability to design or reproduce life from scratch or even to bring extinct species back from extinction: I'm talking about dispelling another myth, explaining another mystery without relying on further myths and mysteries ad infinitum.
Remember the scene from Blade Runner where the genetic engineer looks at a snake scale to find an identification number encoded in the artificial snake? Perhaps the team who put together a synthetic "replicant" bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides remembered when they encoded the names of the 46 scientists in the project along with the project's e-mail address into its genome.
Beyond being another blow to the "I don't understand how it works so God must have done it" fallacy, the creation of living, reproducing things from bottles of Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine will require us to re-examine the nature of life itself and just when it "begins."
I wonder if looking back at today's newspapers 200 years from now we won't wonder why it didn't make the headlines, but perhaps the reason is the same reason we're in so much trouble right now: 300 million self-absorbed, short sighted, ignorant life forms trapped in solipsistic bubbles ( or tea bags) unable to see much beyond the membrane.
As one of those self-absorbed and ignorant life forms, Captain, I caught this news driving to a grocery store last night, and thought, how awesome -- and how scary.
ReplyDeleteHope that Pandora's box has some pretty pictures on it, at least.
If venter can get that bacteria to DEvolve a bit, he will have created a Teabagger.
ReplyDeleteThey're talking about bacteria that eat oil spills, but I'd rather see a strain that eats baggers alive.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a blue nipple.
ReplyDeleteA blue nipple! Sounds so much better than Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0.
ReplyDeleteVenter was on Charlie Rose tonight -- they had a pretty interesting conversation about the blue nipple, though I don't think they've posted the clip yet.
Perhaps I've read way too much sci-fi but this scares the hell out of me. Humankind has not had a great track record for using advances in science only to promote the common good.
ReplyDeleteThere's an Indian folk story about three wise men who set off on a journey to a neighboring town. They travel together for safety because the road leads through the jungle.
A regular guy who lives in their village asks to travel with them as he also has business in the city. They reluctantly allow him to accompany them, concerned that he is too ignorant to be allowed to be in their learned company. They instruct him to walk behind them and to refrain from participating in their learned discourse.
Along the way, they come upon a pile of bones. Wise man #1 identifies the bones as those of a tiger. Wise man #2 announces that he has the skills to give the bones flesh once again. Wise man #3, wanting to demonstrate his superior knowledge, announces that he can give life again to the tiger. At this point, the ignorant man asks for permission to speak and tries to dissuade them of this plan. Unable to do so, he asks the wise men pause in their efforts long enough to allow him to climb a nearby tree.
Hours later, after the tiger has feasted, the ignorant man continues his journey to the city.
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should.
I just had to post one last comment.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry -- be happy.
Fear of technology has been a constant refrain for centuries - ask Galileo and Giordano Bruno and the uncountable thousands of witches. Ignorance is far more dangerous than any knowledge.
There was a great fear in the land when the lightning rod was invented. The discovery of electricity had us in fear that we could make the dead walk and put together monsters. There was near hysteria about the telegraph which just might steal your thoughts and allow others to read them if you got too near the wires. Books were written about that. People got rich selling electric shocks to recharge your nervous system after the telegraph and electric lights gave you "neurasthenia" and sexual complaints. Al Nobel nearly blew his brains out because dynamite was going to destroy the world.
Are there any 1930's and 40's horror movies that don't have some bearded prophet intoning "there are some things man was not meant to know" Hell, even the Bible and greek mythology tell us that. Many religions are all about keeping us ignorant and helpless and feeling good about it.
Remember just recently when cell phones were going to kill the bees? I made myself hoarse trying to explain to people just how enormously ignorant that was and of course I was right. Still waiting for some apologies on that one, but Godot will show up first.
Listened to some wizard on CNN today free associating about how transplanting an artificial bacterial nucleus would lead to eugenics just like the Nazis practiced. There's somebody in real need of some gene therapy right there if not some electric shocks to the gonads.
Life is just chemistry and molecular mechanics and sooner or later creating it won't be more mysterious than brewing beer. Could somebody create an artificial disease? Sure, but we've been able to do that all along. The potential for enormous life extension, the end of disease -- for all kinds of things -- are more than we can imagine and besides it's inevitable. It's been inevitable all along, just like space travel and Pac Man. There's no going back without losing it all.
As far as I'm concerned our only chance of survival is to learn to splice in the gene for intelligence 'cause there's nothing more dangerous than Dumb.
Ok this time I'm really outta here.
Dear Captain, I don't have fear of technology; I have fear of humankind.
ReplyDelete