Creation of Synthetic Life

[Shroom Man 777]

And why would they want bioweapons? Not only are pathogens difficult to control, so that they'll just as easily end up diseasing Iranian people, but in destroying actual enemy militaries it's total shit in that application. Certainly it's not difficult to fabricate bioweapons, but what's their utility as a weapon and as a deterrent?

You know, they have leaders who think that Allah will protect them from nukes - such insane thinking can easily be applied to pathogens.

You know, they have leaders who've never engaged in a war of aggression in the decades ever since their nation came into existence, and who've only ended up waging war when they got attacked by a US-back regime that turned out to be the one who DID have such insane thinking applied to pathogens? Am i rite?

As for playing god in creating synthetic life, the scientists can just tell them that playing is for children.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The single biggest amazing feat here for me, is just the fact that they switched the code from "AGTC" to using EVERY LETTER in the alphabet. All of them, and this thing 'lives' and functions just fine. More to the point, they used this to encode an E-mail address into the DNA! How epic is that?

I mean, If we are learning how to do this, it would be child's play to God right? I mean, wouldn't the ultimate sign of "Intelligent Design" be going into our DNA and finding something like "I am the Lord thy God!" or something.

Also I have to laugh at the rampant Scaremongering. Genetic and biological weapons have been the realm of fantasy for decades. Not because they CAN'T be made or used, but just because how wildly impractical they are. 40 million for some small microbe? If oyu were serious about using chemicals, just spend that to whip up some Anthrax, or shoot even Mustard Gas!

Aside from various poisons, chemicals and toxic substances, has a Nation EVER used a true biological agent like a Virus for use in war?

[Mayabird]

The single biggest amazing feat here for me, is just the fact that they switched the code from "AGTC" to using EVERY LETTER in the alphabet. All of them, and this thing 'lives' and functions just fine. More to the point, they used this to encode an E-mail address into the DNA! How epic is that?

No they didn't. They made a code using those four bases which could be used for writing. It's like Morse code, only with four symbols instead of two. While you're at it, take a few extra seconds to read back over your damn posts and correct things that are wrong. Maybe if you put a tiny little bit of extra thought and effort in, you wouldn't end up sounding like a damn idiot.

I mean, If we are learning how to do this, it would be child's play to God right? I mean, wouldn't the ultimate sign of "Intelligent Design" be going into our DNA and finding something like "I am the Lord thy God!" or something.

Also I have to laugh at the rampant scaremongering. Genetic and biological weapons have been the realm of fantasy for decades. Not because they CAN'T be made or used, but just because how wildly impractical they are. 40 million for some small microbe? If you were serious about using chemicals, just spend that to whip up some anthrax, or shoot even mustard gas!

Aside from various poisons, chemicals and toxic substances, has a nation EVER used a true biological agent like a virus for use in war?

Let's see, would you count catapulting diseased corpses into besieged cities? Smallpox blankets? Definitely the horse diseases deliberately spread in World War I. The Imperial Japanese dropping plague-infected fleas on Chinese cities - that killed about 400,000 people. That's just off the top of my head.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

It's not quite the big accomplishment everyone seems to think it is. Venter's team hasn't put together a fully synthetic life-form. Not yet. What they figured out how to do was assemble DNA bits into a complete copy of a pre-existing life-form's genome(a Mycoplasma mycoides, to be exact,) stuck it into a Mycoplasma capricolum cell, and had the cell function.

So, in essence, what he's done is he's worked out how to compile and link the source code of life into a working program. They have not yet succeeded in writing their own "source code" . . . though now that they've worked out how to synthesize these large functional blocks of genetic material, they can now focus on working out how to engineer and synthesize a functional genome from scratch. Only after that can we really say that synthetic life has been created.

[mr friendly guy]

Isn't that like saying the Chinese can't build <insert product here> because they just copied from an existing design to build their own cheap knockoff?

[adam_grif]

Yes it is like saying that.

But of course, the article was giving the impression that somehow this life was totally new, when it's not. It is indeed synthetic, but based on an existing design. Still impressive, but less so.

[MKSheppard]

Aside from various poisons, chemicals and toxic substances, has a Nation EVER used a true biological agent like a Virus for use in war?

Yes, the Soviet Union did against German Horses in the east. Killed all of them with Glanders.

[Zed]

...which is why its good that this technology was created by people who have more interest in medicine than weapons.

It only takes one to catch a case of fundie or just sell out for money. Or rather, every one who does is a serious risk.

Because its not like we have ethics committees and courts for this kind of thing.

Oh, yeah, that's right--- we've already got several safeguards in place, we just need to use them. Sure, they aren't perfect, but I think its too soon to worry about the weaponization of this technology just yet.

These safeguards and bioethics committees are worried about this breakthrough themselves:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_ ... 138831.stm has numerous bio-ethicists discussing the matter. I'll just cite one:

GLENN MCGEE, FOUNDER OF AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BIOETHICS AND FRANCIS PROFESSOR IN BIOETHICS

We have now accomplished the last piece on the list that was required to do what ethicists called "playing God". What that literally means is the capacity to be a creator.

There are a number of people who will find that very fact in itself terrifying. Many believe there ought to be certain areas that ought to be left alone. This is one of those areas where you can do things vastly before you consider their implications.

There are obviously very important ethical issues. This work has proceeded without any real regulation at all. The bad guys are out there. Weaponising all sorts of things will be much, much easier.

The science is flying 30,000 feet over the public's understanding of the ethics. Scientists can be their own worst enemy by using words like "clone" or "synthetic life".

This isn't a case of rogue scientists, this is a group that is extremely well known, incredibly well respected.

You are going to have to help scientists with education so this thing doesn't become a national or international threat.

[That is] the way to fend off the Luddites that would say this and any other genetic research is awful - these people will be harder to fend off because more safeguards haven't been made.

[Medic]

I thought that this wasn't too far away from my biochem days a few years ago but if this technology goes onto do a tenth of what is claimed could then this is big news indeed.

A few extra years in the last decade was a good time for 'playing god' stuff to lay low.

According to Richard Dawkins,' he basically had his God Delusion book ready around 2000 but his publisher suggested it was too early / there was no audience for it. A few years of Bush and things were quite different. Also, the CERN particle accelerator recently did NOT end the world in the last year, if anyone noticed. (not that doomsdayists ever have much influence in stuff) Still, it's a good thing that now that this 1st step towards artificial life has been taken, the aforementioned party's have been thoroughly discredited.

Hopefully this ensures more funding and an accelerated rate of research. If we play god fast enough we might reduce the sum level of stupid in the world by putting the Christian right and neo-luddites in a state of apoplectic shock. That's certainly worth $40m.

[MKSheppard]

Right, because biotech is cheap. Not. Didn't you notice the $40m pricetag that this project had?

You fucking moron -- 40 million is CHEAP. I mean; it cost only $25 million to fund SPACE SHIP ONE, and that was bankrolled by a single private investor completely.

Iran spends a billion bucks a year on it's bomb program easily.

And this is only with the present state of the art tech. The costs will drop dramatically in the next 15-25 years as technology becomes more cheap and affordable.

[Formless]

Right, because biotech is cheap. Not. Didn't you notice the $40m pricetag that this project had?

You fucking moron -- 40 million is CHEAP. I mean; it cost only $25 million to fund SPACE SHIP ONE, and that was bankrolled by a single private investor completely.

Iran spends a billion bucks a year on it's bomb program easily.

$40M for an organism that is basically a cheap knockoff of something that already exists. An organism that serves no other purpose than to prove that it can be done. It will take much more research before they can program any useful functions into an organism, and once they can you have to take into account the design work necessary to make a pathogen that can pose a threat to anyone. Plus there is the money you have to throw at the project in order to make it safe to manufacture, work that must be done to protect your own population, and of course you have to design a delivery system that doesn't suck. All of that effort, and it may not be cost effective because bioweapons are inherently crappy for terror attacks and the risk of pissing off third parties who have nothing to do with any given conflict but are at risk of infection anyway due to the nature of bioweapons makes it not very good for deterrence like nukes are either.

Do you have anything else to say, mister "I'm only going to address one statement without reading the rest of the arguments that back it up?"

And this is only with the present state of the art tech. The costs will drop dramatically in the next 15-25 years as technology becomes more cheap and affordable.

I know we hear this kind of thing all the time, but I would like to see the evidence that this projection is accurate. Some technologies never get cheaper as time goes on: rockets are just as expensive today as they always were.

[Surlethe]

I have purged some one-line spam from this thread.

[Shroom Man 777]

But, again, Shepoes, what's the actual military benefit or utility of bioweapons as WMDs? It doesn't discriminate between friend or foe, its spread is unpredictable and might also fuck your populace, it's very politically crappy and gets other people very angry at you, and nukes/chemical weapons can do the job way better than bioweapons. The only use of it might be to scare other people away if you threaten to infect their populaces, but other weapons might be a better form of deterrent.

Also, how effective and efficient are bioweapon delivery systems?

[Ziggy Stardust]

But, again, Shepoes, what's the actual military benefit or utility of bioweapons as WMDs? It doesn't discriminate between friend or foe, its spread is unpredictable and might also fuck your populace, it's very politically crappy and gets other people very angry at you, and nukes/chemical weapons can do the job way better than bioweapons. The only use of it might be to scare other people away if you threaten to infect their populaces, but other weapons might be a better form of deterrent.

Also, how effective and efficient are bioweapon delivery systems?

In addition, the research from the OP is essentially worthless for creating bioweapons anyway. Genetically modifying anthrax or an existing viral strain can create a very dangerous weapon, it is true. But creating a new bacteria with the methods from this study isn't going to do anything. People forget that 99.9999% of single-celled organisms don't do anything except survive long enough to reproduce. Very few microbial organisms are actually capable of being dangerous in the first place, and we don't understand the evolutionary pressures and genetic reasons for this well enough yet to be able to replicate it. The ability to "create" a new bacterial disease would be just as difficult and impressive a feat of genetic research as creating a new animal species.

[Shroom Man 777]

How would you make it "more dangerous" anyway?

[PeZook]

How would you make it "more dangerous" anyway?

By giving it the qualities of the perfect bioweapon, basically (long incubation time, symptomless before it's too late to do anything about it, very infectious, easy to contain once it's done its thing).

It's not clear whether or not it can even be done at all, even with perfect control over designer organisms.

[Shroom Man 777]

Doing all that is going to be a complete bitch. I wonder if they'll need human subjects...

[Gil Hamilton]

By giving it the qualities of the perfect bioweapon, basically (long incubation time, symptomless before it's too late to do anything about it, very infectious, easy to contain once it's done its thing).

It's not clear whether or not it can even be done at all, even with perfect control over designer organisms.

It seems to me that some of those things are contradictory. The first three don't jive with the last one. If you want your fancy plague to actually spread over a large region it must NOT be easy to contain. Like all things, there is a trade off.

[PeZook]

It seems to me that some of those things are contradictory. The first three don't jive with the last one. If you want your fancy plague to actually spread over a large region it must NOT be easy to contain. Like all things, there is a trade off.

Of course. Much like the perfect market, the perfect bioweapon is impossible to make

Unless of course your mastery of biology is such that your can write in a specific kill-protein into your deadly virus, and make it impossible to be mutated away, but good luck with that. And, of course, your enemy will then be able to analyze the virus in hope of identifying the killswitch, disabling it and unloading your own plague on you in revenge

[MKSheppard]

But, again, Shepoes, what's the actual military benefit or utility of bioweapons as WMDs?

Cheaper than Nukes or chemicals. You don't need as many delivery systems. I mean; think about how hard it is to eliminate the US as a decently industrial country; due to all the light industrial parks we got.

[Formless]

But, again, Shepoes, what's the actual military benefit or utility of bioweapons as WMDs?

Cheaper than Nukes or chemicals. You don't need as many delivery systems. I mean; think about how hard it is to eliminate the US as a decently industrial country; due to all the light industrial parks we got.

But that only matters if you're so omnicidal that you don't care about the possibility of a pandemic--

Oh, right.

Edit: and really, what's cheaper to make than chemical weapons? When even a cult like Aum Shinrikyo can make sarin AND successfully deploy it in a terrorist attack, it seems rather hard to swallow that bioweapons are going to be much cheaper or more threatening.

[Mayabird]

But, again, Shepoes, what's the actual military benefit or utility of bioweapons as WMDs?

Cheaper than Nukes or chemicals. You don't need as many delivery systems. I mean; think about how hard it is to eliminate the US as a decently industrial country; due to all the light industrial parks we got.

But that only matters if you're so omnicidal that you don't care about the possibility of a pandemic--

Oh, right.

Edit: and really, what's cheaper to make than chemical weapons? When even a cult like Aum Shinrikyo can make sarin AND successfully deploy it in a terrorist attack, it seems rather hard to swallow that bioweapons are going to be much cheaper or more threatening.

Shep is not advocating biowarfare. He is simply pointing out the utility as was asked, leaving out the disadvantages which has kept them from being used for the most part (namely, that the germs can spread themselves right back to the originator and will be just as bad for them). Of course as I've pointed out, anybody (terrorists or whatever) will have a much easier time doing a lot of damage if they don't care about their own survival.

Which gets back to the thing about chemical weapons. Chemical weapons don't reproduce themselves. They are, like all non-biological weapons, limited to what people can produce and deliver. Bio weapons can make their targets delivery systems as well.

[stormthebeaches]

You know, they have leaders who've never engaged in a war of aggression in the decades ever since their nation came into existence, and who've only ended up waging war when they got attacked by a US-back regime that turned out to be the one who DID have such insane thinking applied to pathogens? Am i rite?

As for playing god in creating synthetic life, the scientists can just tell them that playing is for children.

Iran's lack of aggression is more due to capability than motive. As for the Iraq/Iran war, Iraq may have fired the first shot but Iran had been stroking the tensions for years. Also, Iran ignored the peace offering and launched its own invasion of Iraq soon after with the stated goal of pushing all the way to Israel.

[Formless]

Of course as I've pointed out, anybody (terrorists or whatever) will have a much easier time doing a lot of damage if they don't care about their own survival.

1) the idea of a terrorist group getting their hands on the equipment to make bioweapons is laughable, and exactly the kind of scaremongering I was talking about on the last page.

2) that leaves "rogue states" and first world countries as the other possible threats. However, the larger and more diverse the group is the harder its going to be to override the group's survival instinct. Its one thing to for a terror cell to convince someone, through the right application of social pressures and indoctrination, to blow themselves up; its another for a statesman to convince his country to do something self destructive. It would be political suicide (pun intended).

[Mayabird]

I'm saying hypothetically. Yeah, it's harder to get the materials for bioweapons without a lot of backing and funding and once things get bigger it's harder to get everybody to want to die. Typically they're in these groups because they want to win (whatever their definitions of winning would be), which requires them to not die.