The weeks most exciting story is surely Venter. I look in to his eyes and I see my own. His team of scientists have creted life. Life, not evolutionary or genetic engineering but life from nothing. Surely a defining point in human history. The sual cry of 'man playing god' comes from religious cirles thoughthis is scince on a par witreion. Th orgnism is based on bacteria that cause mastitis in goats but at it's core is an entirely synthetic genome constructed in a laboratoy from chemicals. The single cell organism has 'water marks' written into it's DNA that an trace it back to it's creator hould it go on the run. 'It's a living species now, part of our planets inventory of life'. This changes our understanding of what life is. The uses alked of are creating useful chemicals to break own pollutants or create vaccines. Julian Savulescu , professor of practical ethics at Oxford university is angered. 'Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanities history, potentially peeping in to it's destiny. He is not merely copying life artificially, he is going towards God. Creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally'.
Venter is a controversial figure, back in the 1990s his company, Celera Genomics fought the publicly funded Human Gerome project in boths bodies efforts to sequence the human genome. He has already applied for over 300 patents on specific genes which would give his company interlectual rights over building blocks of life. With other studies takin g place in science and philosophy over the nature of time could it transpire that we created ourselves? That question, the big one, 'what the fuck is going on?', 'How did we get here?', all the gaps that eligion seeks to fill may well result in a loop. That it was s. I have always struggled to believe that the chances of all this happening are very slim. I'm sure most people have that thought. We made gods to fill it but, who knows? maybe it was us.
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