Does anybody find this disturbing?
Check out this article on designer bacteria.
"The organisms can be designed to die as soon as they leave laboratory conditions."
Have we learned nothing about life?! It does not behave like machines!
"For the first time, God has competition."
What they are doing just an extreme version of "tweaking" life. If somebody could create life from non-life, then perhaps they could make such currently ridiculous claims. Until then, they are just the dog breeders of bacteria.
I hope they are exercising more caution then their pompous tone suggests... they are treading on dangerous territory.
posted by Nathan Allan at
8:16 PM
1 Comments:
There are parts that are disturbing, but they are not unique to genetic modification (GM). Ethical discipline is taught that lays out rules for the use of any disruptive technology? The fact that GM is one of the most disruptive technologies (in that it changes the very landscape of biological existence) raises the stakes, but it doesn't make the problem any more complicated.
The problem is simple: when technology is discovered and invented what burden do its creators have to properly educate, regulate and safeguard its use among the general population? We didn't do it for the rock-tipped club, the gun, the A bomb or morphine.
Becoming alarmed at this point is a little disingenuous. Sure, GM may affect your food and health, but the bullet and the combustion engine have caused numerous deaths both intentional and accidental. The expansion of human habitat have resulted in the extinction of thousands of species. Where is the grand ethical tradition of questioning those problems?
On its own, GM is way cool. Imagine that we could use stem cell therapy on ourselves to live twice as long or expand the regions of the brain that allow us to solve difficult problems. Imagine if we could use GM to restore some of our lost biodiversity. That might be nice. Just because we know that it will be used by future former oil companies to create hydrogen producing algae that will escape into the ocean and kill the whales doesn't mean it is bad. It means we haven't taken up the job in human society to ethically use the power of technology.
By
McKinley, at 12:16 PM
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