by Julian Savulescu
With his new paper Craig Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity’s history, potentially peeking into it’s destiny. He is not merely copying life artificially as Wilmut did or modifying it radically by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of a god: creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally. Creating life from the ground up using basic building blocks.
At the moment it is basic bacteria just capable of replicating. This is a step towards something much more controversial: creation of living beings with capacities and natures that could never have naturally evolved.
The potential is in the far future, but real and significant: dealing with pollution, new energy sources, new forms of communication. But the risks are also unparalleled. We need new standards of safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse and abuse. These could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the apple without choking on the worm.
Other posts in PracticalEthicsNews on synthetic biology
Changing the Building Blocks of Life: Playing God and Being gods
Hello Professor Savulescu,
I read with great interest your comments about the genetic engineering breakthrough achieved at the Venter Institute. We are going to take up the subject on our radio program next Tuesday (May 25th)and I wanted to see if you would be available to join us. “To the Point” is current events public radio show that runs on NPR stations around the U.S. The show is hosted by Warren Olney and takes the form of a panel discussion, with three or four guests representing a variety of viewpoints. Among the guests, we hope to have someone from the Venter Institute on the show.
Thanks very much for your consideration.
Best,
Darrell
Darrell Satzman
Producer, “To the Point” and “Which Way L.A.?”
KCRW and Public Radio International
310-314-4691
darrell.satzman@kcrw.org
http://www.kcrw.com/tothepoint
http://www.kcrw.com/whichwayla
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