[billybobsky]

I am tacitly connected to the synthetic biology field and it worries me that people are reacting aggressively against the recently announced synthetic genome bacteria (Venter et al.) as opposed to in awe about the possibilities. It needs to be made clear is that the announcement is barely an actual advancement -- synthetic genes are routinely made for all sorts of discovery purposes; it's just a matter of scale with a system we understand very well.

It concerns me most because we are rapidly approaching a point in human knowledge where what it means to be human will be laid bare by systematic studies from genome to phenotype -- this isn't a far off prospect. The fear being demonstrated by certain elements of society (including, somewhat shockingly, the President) suggests that they are not going to respond well when it becomes clear that us scientists have digested the human soul (but perhaps not the spirit) to oblivion.