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Artificial Life - amazing breakthrough or one step too far?

I'm actually really impressed with how far humans got these days. The first synthetic cell is a major breakthrough, and from what I was told, the chance of it terrorizing and plaguing humanity is miniscule. Of course I can disagree with these guys, but I'm not the expert here. I find it ignorant to ignore people who spent a large part of their lives in this field just because you don't believe it to be right.

Yusshin said:

We are not creators. We are creations. Humans should stop trying to play God with their cloning and ****.
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We can't play imaginary things.
 
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I watched a documentary the other day on this, it was pretty interesting. The process these scientists have to go through to build one chromosome or gene or whatever it was they used yeast to assemble was complicated enough as it is, but then getting it to sort of take over a host cell was a long process too. And one problem is they can only do this with some of the smallest bacteria, otherwise it would take much longer to go through the whole process.
 
I don't feel like joining this argument, so I won't.

Just wanted to say I think it's the most exciting scientific advancement since the splitting of the atom. Hell, it's the most exciting scientific advancement since the discovery of fire.
 
Looks cool. Humans creating new beings by science and preventing an inevitable problem. However in the bad side there's a possibility of bio-terror. They could even create a horrible fictional disease called GUILT.
 
If humans only feared the possible military potential of technology, we'd be living back in the stone age. I don't think that there is a single useful machine, object or idea created by man that could not be used for war. Hell, if it wasn't for war, we'd be in a much less technological society. Look at the extremely quick development of the aircraft during the early 1900s during the world wars.

"Oh no, he could make bombs by splitting the atom. I had better stop him."

"Oh no, he could burn me with this new 'fire'. I had better stop him."

"Oh no, he could write and send military secrets using the written word. I had better stop him."

Quite often, the military benefits are well outweighed by the social and economic benefits.
 
Gymnotide said:
I'd like to both bump this thread, as well as rescind my previous sentiments with this video:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3214/01.html

It's very relevant and we're getting pretty close, it seems... Though, what I was most concerned about was creating a living being from single atoms, which it doesn't seem like anyone else was talking about anywho. If we're talking about pre-existing materials, then sure we can do it.
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I watched that video and the... thing the scientist had designed, the cell with no membrane or DNA was really interesting. It was so massively different from terrestrial life.
 
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