I am creating life, says US scientist

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Letum

So....your equaly against pigeon breeding?

Feel free to think of yourself as nothing more than a pigeon, but me - I don't buy it. Even pigeon breeding envolves natural selection of genes - it does not enforce genetic combinations that nature - if left alone - would never put together. Also, pigeons do not try to manipulate their own genes. Pigeon breeding compares to humans of different races having sex and children in the natural way.

Quiztime. Is Plutonium a "natural" element"? It was not created by mother nature, but by man, in the lab. Naturally, to our knowledge it does not exist anywhere in the nature known to man.

And how do you adress the risks of messing up genes by designing them so that a certain function if fulfilled or a certaion disease does not show up - at the price of intirducing an even greater threat to the organism, as described in that old article I referred to i my last posting? It describes things that we just have started to get an image of that they are an issue - knowing we do not much, or better: close to nothing about these links and interdependancies. and if a scientist would create life and intentionally desiogn flaws and arrors into it, even disease, to make it immune to other diseases, he would also be at war with some ethics commission.

And yes, the ethics of this all - an abyss opening up before us...

We are not ready for these things. We do not know about the powers we start to mess around with. Maybe in the future, sometime, but that is not more than a "maybe".