life created in lab?

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Scientists create artificial life in lab - Yahoo! India News

gee, that wasnt so hard after all, was it?
"created a synthetic cell, controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can also reproduce itself."

---------- Post added 05-21-2010 at 08:46 PM ----------

additional links:
Scientists Create First Synthetic Cell - WSJ.com

Artificial Life Created in a Laboratory for the First Time | Impact Lab

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@salima,

Yup - I guess "scientists have yet to make life in a lab" will have to be struck from the list of common creationist canards - not that it was ever a good objection to anything anyhow.

I like how it's blue - man made life should be blue really. It feels about right.

1 Reply

@Dave Allen,

Very interesting.

One part that hits me as having rather large philosophical (and in particular, ethical) considerations is best told by this line (from the article):
[INDENT]"...but the ability to craft an entire organism offers a new power over life"
[/INDENT]Lots to think about

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@salima,

Well, I don't think the significance of this really lies in the religion vs science debate. After all, they modeled it off of already existing life. But, the potential applications of this kind of technology could be interesting.

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@salima,

salima;166909 wrote:

gee, that wasnt so hard after all, was it?

Most things ain't so hard to make/do once you know how, it's the epic journey to arrive to the goal, which may be complicated.

We can produce organism which can make complex work, and at the same time resistant to radiation from space, tough and sturdy which can endure conditions which humans wouldn't tolerate.

Now we also need to evolve our cybernetics and AI to teach such beings to learn pre defined schooling information to learn how to operate complex machinery ..etc.

Maybe in 50 years we will see the first plans to inhabit Mars with evolved human made organisms.

1 Reply

@HexHammer,

I think this a complete overstatement of the facts. They have not created life, they have manipulated life. Why do they always come our with these grand statements, why?

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@salima,

i must be a chicken little-the first thing that came to my mind is that they will create something that goes berserk and takes over the whole planet wiping out all other life forms-like a plague bacteria or something...

how bout this; governments can create armies that wage war against each other on other planets so they dont have to make a mess here with dead bodies and all...

i assume there are too many people involved for it to be a hoax...time will tell what the practical applications may be. in the meantime every unethical organization is thinking how much money there is to be made from this and how to get in on it.

i dont think of it in the light of the creation vs evolution question: i just think of it as another area for humanity to make mistakes and destroy things. and i used to be an optimist! really!

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@salima,

HAHA I love it.

'We've now created life!'

All they have done is take something already living and implant it with synthetic DNA. THAT ISN'T CREATING LIFE. Creating life would be taking some inanimate matter and turning it into something living. IN FACT if you look at the facts, this apparent 'synthetic' DNA they didn't actually CREATE anyway, they just took DNA from other already living things, stitched it together, and stick it into a an already living cell. And so they come out and say 'WE'VE CREATED LIFE!'

BULLSHIT

This, and the way that this has been reported and proclaimed by the scientific community, is so utterly typical of the LYING, CHEATING, DEVIOUS scientific materialists.

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@richard mcnair,

They implant synthetic DNA into a cell. This cell would have to be "functional", and the synthetic DNA is recombination of DNA slice bits. They did not create life from non-life at all.

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@salima,

This is amazing. It would have been more amazing had they actually somehow assemble this germ from scratch. I've looked briefly at an organic chemistry book and was astounded by the complexity of even a cell. A machine of staggering complexity! Still, to have assemble the genome is amazing. They basically just worked on the program, right? And plugged it into some stripped hardware....

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@salima,

This is a mark of great progress of our knowledge, but I'm worried that his was done by a private group that has over 300 patents on DNA.
This is the kind of stuff you see in the sci-fi dystopian films and novels.

1 Reply

@Thunder phil,

Here's the source article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/science.1190719v1.pdf

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@salima,

Now here's an ethical question for y'all. Say we work out how to manufacture an artificial hominid species by this means.

1. Should we?

2. Would be OK to use them as slaves?

EDIT - I had flippantly added a few other 'suggested uses' but thought better of it and took them out.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;167214 wrote:

Now here's an ethical question for y'all. Say we work out how to manufacture an artificial hominid species by this means.

1. Should we?

2. Would be OK to use them as slaves? (or drones/soldiers/target practice/sexual companions/etc etc)

If they'r like autistic savant dogs, it wouldn't be a problem.

1 Reply

@HexHammer,

HexHammer;167215 wrote:

If they'r like autistic savant dogs, it wouldn't be a problem.

Perhaps...but if we were wrong? I'm not worried about using germs, but if we move up the food chain it might get complicated.

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;167497 wrote:

but if we move up the food chain it might get complicated.

In which way excatly?

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;167182 wrote:

This is amazing. It would have been more amazing had they actually somehow assemble this germ from scratch. I've looked briefly at an organic chemistry book and was astounded by the complexity of even a cell. A machine of staggering complexity! Still, to have assemble the genome is amazing. They basically just worked on the program, right? And plugged it into some stripped hardware....

that's the way they see it - that the body is just a temporary vehicle for the gene, diposable, really. However, the fact that they have not the ability to make it from scratch shows the weakness of their false claim, and their ideology. Although it is amazing work.

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@xris,

xris;167005 wrote:

I think this a complete overstatement of the facts. They have not created life, they have manipulated life. Why do they always come our with these grand statements, why?

I love these types of criticisms. It's like:

"Let's make a box, except let's not use any materials that are currently being used to make boxes, because that would be cheating."

For these types of early experiments, we have to use something that we know works. We use what we know to see if it can come about. I am sure later they will tweak the experiments to see if other types of "organic" compounds can produce self replicating cells.

1 Reply

@salima,

Here's a question: if the beginning of life can be figured out, how come the cause of cancer can't be? Because they are really very similar in some ways. I knew a medical researcher once who characterised cancer as 'new growth'. One important difference is, however, we can actually inspect and analyze cancers as they occur, whereas whatever happened in the 'warm little pond' is separated from us by 4 billion years, or so.

(I actually get the feeling that the idea that, once it commences, biological evolution is kind of like a spontaneous reaction that culminates in complex beings, is far from the truth.)

3 Replies

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;168458 wrote:

I knew a medical researcher once who characterised cancer as 'new growth'.

A failure of apoptosis, seems a better characterisation, to me.

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