Pentagon looks to Breed Immortal "Synthetic Organisms"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/pentagon-looks-to-breed-immortal-synthetic-organisms-molecular-kill-switch-included/
By: Katie Drummond, Source: "Wired"
Date: 2/5/2010
The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.
Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:
Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.
The project comes as Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”
Of course, Darpa’s up against some vexing, fundamental laws of nature — not to mention bioethics — as they embark on the lab beast program. First, they might want to rethink the idea of evolution as a random series of events, says NYU biology professor David Fitch. “Evolution by selection is nota random process at all, and is actually a hugely efficient design algorithm used extensively in computation and engineering,” he e-mails Danger Room.
Even if Darpa manages to overcome the inherent intelligence of evolutionary processes, overcoming inevitable death can be tricky. Just ask all the other research teams who’ve made stabs at it, trying everything from cell starvation to hormone treatments. Gene therapy, where artificial genes are inserted into an organism to boost cell life, are the latest and greatest in life-extension science, but they’ve only been proven to extend lifespan by 20 percent in rats.
But suppose gene therapy makes major strides, and Darpa does manage to get the evolutionary science right. They’ll also have a major ethical hurdle to jump. Synthetic biology researchers are already facing the same questions, as a 2009 summary from the Synthetic Biology Project reports:
The concern that humans might be overreaching when we create organisms that never before existed can be a safety concern, but it also returns us to disagreements about what is our proper role in the natural world (a debate largely about non-physical harms or harms to well-being).
Even expert molecular geneticists don’t know what to make of the project. Either that, or they’re scared Darpa might sic a bio-bot on them. “I would love to comment, but unfortunately Darpa has installed a kill switch in me,” one unnamed expert tells Danger Room.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
5 comments:
Please explain the photo. It is sensationalist to use it without any explanation or source.
Very first sentence a lie:
"The pic below is one of synthetically created animals."
You're being lied to here, people. This is a creative sculpture by a woman in Australia, not a synthetic genetic weirdness.
See
http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/sirenmole/mole_images.html
Anonymous, its not a lie, go to the very link you gave to us and read the text. It states clearly she created those to represent what we can expect if genetic engineering in biology is allowed to continue. However, I agree that I could have said it much better and clearer than I did.
If you read the article, which clearly you did not, you would see it clearly states this is not our reality yet, but that Darpa is in the process of getting the funding to begin to do this.
I published it so we can stop this before it becomes our reality. If you are not going to read before commenting, at least then choose less insulting words to begin your disagreement.
I am also going to assume you did not read the text of what the artist wrote on her site about those creatures she created since she makes it clear this is coming and she wanted to use her art to highlight that fact so we would stop it. OK? Call your congressman and senator IF YOU CAN GET THROUGH THEIR KHAZAR SELECTED STAFF. Othewise reach them through their families.
Well, for some reason, when I click on publish, they are not showing up, so here is a comment from "Anonymous" and I suspect its the same one who did the post that did show up.
"Very first sentence a lie: "The pic below is one of synthetically created animals." You're being lied to here, people. This is a creative sculpture by a woman in Australia, not a synthetic genetic weirdness. See http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/sirenmole/mole_images.html on Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included"
My response which also did not publish, is in the next comment.
Funny how I had to add a comment for the previous two comments to show up. Odd.... google, are you playing around or are we being hacked?
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