Artificial life

joanlawson

Do you find the news that artificial life has been created in a laboratory alarming :?:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1279988/Artificial-life-created-Craig-Venter--wipe-humanity.html

There seems the potential for so much good, but I wonder whether the scientists are unleashing something they don't fully understand.

To quote Michael Hanlon, The potential is huge - but so are the dangers. An artificial species, created in the lab, might not 'obey the rules' of the natural world - after all, every living being on Earth has evolved over three billion years, when a myriad of competing species have had to share the same increasingly crowded environment.
It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world's crop plants or even humanity itself.

Scary stuff, isn't it?

Joan

frogmorton

OMG

Joan

Turn it off :shock:

I is scared!!!

Love

Toni xx

joanlawson

Sorry to scare you , Toni. I scared myself reading it :!: :shock: :shock:

Scientists are only human, and could make a mistake, with unknown consequences.



Now I've really scared myself :!:

frogmorton

Joan

This is like the worst sort of B movie sci fi film come true :shock: shall we hide?

Toni xx

trisher

Joan

I agree with both you and Toni.

I'm ok with them doing stem research under the right conditions, or people who cannot have children because of a medical condition that would be passed on to the baby.

But this could get so out of hand. It is very scary.

Trish xx

mellman01

Ironic that they Spent the 2nd world war fight the Nazis as they were trying to perfect a warrior race through eugenics and now their scientists have made bacteria from nothing but a few drops of chicken soup and a few chemicals, now call me paranoid but I have two worries with this and they are these.
A) They have no idea what their little hunch backed microbe can do or how benign it is if it was ever let out of its jar.
Now this is the biggie, I bet you anything the first thing they will do is try and apply this for military use, probably make all the Taliban’s turbans melt or their donkeys become vampires and bite them all to death.
Highly ironic but you can bet that they won’t write it all up as sinister if they do, nope can see it now micro’s for peace, democracy in a harmless spray, harmless that is if you don’t wear a turban or own a donkey, the bloody hypocrites will cause all sorts of problems if this thing is ever let out, it’s bypassed dear old Darwin and the very important role evolution plays in the development of all life we know, until now all creature have to earn the right to sit at the evolutionary table, but not this thing, it has bypassed all of this and will have as much regard to the worlds eco system as a piss head has for a kebab on a Saturday night.

oneday

scientists like this have big egos yet stupidity to rock nature...i find it all horrific./obsence

joanlawson

Brushing aside the ethical concerns of his work, Dr Venter wrote in his autobiography that it would allow 'a new creature to enter the world'.

It is nick-named Synthia at present, which sounds all very friendly, but I'm worried if Dr Venter is brushing aside ehtical concerns.

We'll have to take cover from Synthia in the bunker under the Cane and Able if the worst comes to the worst.

Mell, I don't like the sound of those vampire donkeys :!: :shock: :shock:

mellman01

And for those with memories or who need a little insight into how the yanks work, during the Vietnam war they dumped millions of tonnes of agent orange on the rain forests killing the eco system with no regard to anyone or thing that lived there, they also air dropped an alien species of grass over the Chu Chi district then set fire to it once it grew so they could flush out the VC from the tunnels, which ironically I didn’t do as soon as they set it on fire with Napalm the firestorm caused a downpour that put the fire out.
Both Agent Orange and this species of grass still cause problems there to this day, but the most worrying thing was they were trying to perfect a species of Piranha that could live in the paddy fields to deny the VC & NVA of mobility in these areas and also make them unusable for rice growing, luckily they didn’t perfect this bio weapon in time.
Oh vampire donkeys arn't so bad Joan I can see the film winning a Oscar even now.

joanlawson

Crikey Mell, now I've read all that, vampire donkeys don't sound too bad :!: I could always have some garlic at the ready in my pocket. Piranahs :?: HELP :!: :shock: :shock:

only49

hi to be honest i dont agree with this sort of thing we are all different in our own way, unless they doing this to cure cancer or something else, then i can life with it, but what i say is leave well alone and dont mess with something you know nothing about.

man getting far too nosey, life is made the way it is for a reason, there is a fine line between helping and interfering and i do belive some things are best left alone.

my thoughts anyway.

katekelly

This really freaks me out!!! Maybe I'm being a bit thick here but I thought that creation was God's job not some little oik's in a lab coat?! :shock: :shock: :shock:

valval

can they never leave anything alone it scares me where will it end????

oneday

what freaks me out is if they created half human, half not and had it imprisioned and experimented on it...i wouldnt put it past them...its disgusting.

dreamdaisy

Man explores, creates, thinks and experiments. That is why humans have climbed to the heights, dived to the depths, made cars etc, philosophised and tinkered with everything. We do stuff. Animals just hang around and, for the most part, look pretty. Do you want a dolphin to service your boiler? Do you want a Brazillian Wandering Spider to be your plumber? Does a giraffe make a good mechanic? Nah.

Mind you, man does over-reach himself. I remember the picture of a mouse with a human ear growing out of its back. Weird. And not useful to the deaf. But you don't know until you try. DD