Apr 29 2008
what do you think?
I heard a fascinating story on NPR this morning. It describes students at MIT who are engineering new life forms by altering the genes of E. coli.
Listen for yourselves and let me know what you think.
Minty E. Coli and Other Bioengineering Feats
I can’t reconcile the part of me that thinks “Wow, that is cool,” and the part of me that thinks, “Wow, that is terrifying.”
What are you thinking?
on the walk
-Ethan
Tell me more about what you find terrifying: the philosophical (”creating life from scratch”) or the practical (bio-warfare) or both or something else?
I suppose that I am mainly terrified by the new power. New powers are rarely used well, and even once we figure them out they usually remain threatening. On top of that, this does seem like one of those tools that could have unintended and far reaching consequences.
For instance, several years ago some scientists genetically modified corn so that it was resistant to round-up. This means that farmers can just fly over their fields and spray the whole thing with round-up, kill the weeds and the corn will grow. Unfortunately a few weeds have somehow picked up this mutation from crop plants and now round-up resistant weeds are spreading throughout the plains states.
I know that seems silly, but what if that kind of thing happened on the biological kingdom.
I have some philosophical fears as well but the practical fears are so big that I don’t really have time to worry about the philosophical ones.
so what’s the worst thing that could realistically happen(philosphically concerns aside)
how close are we to new breeds of pigeons?