March 29, 2004
And on the next day man created life
Looks like creation of life is coming closer to a lab near you. Reportedly there are over 100 labs that are racing to create custom life that will be engineered to create custom life that are designed to solve life's problems. They give horrible examples of these applications, like a sweater that can mend itself. The risks of this new technology are apparent to anyone who has seen Jurassic Park. The scientists at Los Alamos make two claims to defend the safety of creating new life. First is that the new life will be so fragile that it will not be able to compete with life that has been evolving for millions of years. Second, they claim that they are engineering life to be dependent on chemicals that don't exist in the environment, but only in labs. Michael Crichton couldn't have written the introduction to this tale of global destruction any better.
Posted by Bryant at March 29, 2004 07:39 PM