And Behind This Door...
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky August 27, 2007
Biopolitical Times
"Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years," is the title of a recent widely published Associated Press article, and the message of the scientists interviewed therein.
The "leaders in the field" are described as optimistic and very, very excited. "It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau of the Italian company ProtoLife.
According to the company's website, Bedau - a professor of philosophy and humanities at Reed College since 1991, and editor-in-chief of the journal Artificial Life since 2000 - is "leading the development of socially and ethically responsible practices for creating life-like systems." Perhaps as part of his social and ethical duties, Bedau acknowledges in the AP article that "there are legitimate worries about creating life that could `run amok.'" But not to worry, he says: "There are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem."
Additional insight into the social and ethical implications of creating life in the lab is inadvertently provided by Harvard Medical School's award-winning geneticist Jack Szostak. In describing some of the technical challenges the field faces, Szostak remarks, "We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened."
Reacting to the AP story, the editors of Times of India ran two very different takes. The first cheerleads:
The "leaders in the field" are described as optimistic and very, very excited. "It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau of the Italian company ProtoLife.
According to the company's website, Bedau - a professor of philosophy and humanities at Reed College since 1991, and editor-in-chief of the journal Artificial Life since 2000 - is "leading the development of socially and ethically responsible practices for creating life-like systems." Perhaps as part of his social and ethical duties, Bedau acknowledges in the AP article that "there are legitimate worries about creating life that could `run amok.'" But not to worry, he says: "There are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem."
Additional insight into the social and ethical implications of creating life in the lab is inadvertently provided by Harvard Medical School's award-winning geneticist Jack Szostak. In describing some of the technical challenges the field faces, Szostak remarks, "We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened."
Reacting to the AP story, the editors of Times of India ran two very different takes. The first cheerleads:
The quest for immortality, for the propagation of the species, will find expression in beings created by us, through a process we understand….This ultimate act of creation is born not of foolhardiness but of scientific enquiry and curiosity, which has propelled homo sapiens this far.The second cautions:
Already, by exploiting the physical world around us, we have reduced life-friendly Earth to a furnace where melting ice and rising oceans are posing formidable challenges to human ingenuity. Maverick attempts to leapfrog evolution - bypassing natural checks and balances - could well prove to be our nemesis.