New life-forms created with artificial DNA

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zenfisher

House Member
Sep 12, 2004
2,829
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36
Seattle
Cool...now if we can just engineer them to ingest some of the harmful additives we pollute our atmosphere, land & water with and fart out ozone...we might have something we can work with.
 
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Andygal

Electoral Member
May 13, 2005
518
0
16
BC
RE: New life-forms create

Cool, just think of the possible uses for such a thing! It's amazing. Science has never been this interesting.
 
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bhoour

Electoral Member
May 10, 2005
608
0
16
earth
experts warn that such artificial systems could be accidentally or deliberately released into the environment, possibly with harmful, even deadly, effects. A clever bioterrorist, for example, might be able to re-engineer the smallpox virus and cause an epidemic. People would have no immunity against such an artificial organism.
An article in the Nov. 9 issue of the magazine New Scientist pointed out that a terrorist could order the genes to make smallpox or bird flu to be sent to him through the mail. The gene sequences are publicly available, and there's no system to prevent their misuse

8O
Scarey no?......... and it's all in the name of science, and the for betterment of mankind. :roll:
Science really needs to learn not to eff, with the nature of things.
 
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Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
1,238
1
38
Winnipeg
RE: New life-forms create

There's no putting the genie back in the bottle now, bhoour.

It's kind of funny, but if you want to explore the ethics of this, science fiction writers have been doing so since at least the sixties.
 
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bhoour

Electoral Member
May 10, 2005
608
0
16
earth
Re: RE: New life-forms create

Reverend Blair said:
There's no putting the genie back in the bottle now, bhoour.

It's kind of funny, but if you want to explore the ethics of this, science fiction writers have been doing so since at least the sixties.
Click to expand...

The difference being, Rev., is that it's Science FICTION, you know great stories , fun to imagine.
This sh*t is the real deal, and you are right about no turning back, that's the part that worries me.
 
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Summer

Electoral Member
Nov 13, 2005
573
0
16
Cleveland, Ohio, USA (for now...)
Re: RE: New life-forms created with artificial DNA

zenfisher said:
Cool...now if we can just engineer them to ingest some of the harmful additives we pollute our atmosphere, land & water with and fart out ozone...we might have something we can work with.
Click to expand...

Actually, you don't want them to "fart out ozone" at ground-level. At the level where people breathe, ozone is itself a pollutant.
 
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Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
1,238
1
38
Winnipeg
The difference being, Rev., is that it's Science FICTION, you know great stories , fun to imagine.
This sh*t is the real deal, and you are right about no turning back, that's the part that worries me.
Click to expand...

Like all fiction, science fiction is very useful for considering the various implications of a given situation. It's especially relevant when it comes to social conditions and matters of ethics...at least if it's well-written.
 
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pastafarian

Electoral Member
Oct 25, 2005
541
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in the belly of the mouse
Evolution is far more likely to produce killer viruses and bacteria than humans are. The newspapers don't communicate the technical difficulties that have to be overcome to make the jump from insering a string of DNA into something, while ALSO getting it to behave the way the inserter wants it to.

In fact, the basic technology has been in place since about 1975.
 
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