“Playing God” -Scientists in Final Stage of Creating Man-made Life

Dr Craig Venter, who has led the private sector effort to sequence the human genome, has been working for years to create a man-made organism. He says his company Synthetic Genomics Inc, has nearly completed the journey to create the world’s first free-living artificial organism. According to Venter, it will only be a few more weeks before manmade life is unveiled in his very own laboratory. “It will be one of the bright milestones in human history, changing our conceptual view of life.” Said Venter. Others have a less “bright” view of Venter’s work—they say it could be potentially dangerous. It has been suggested that this type of technology could turn out to be the scary side of “playing God”, since it invariably suggests the chance that dangerous organisms could be inadvertently (or purposefully) unleashed on a world unprepared to deal with the consequences. Because there is no precedence, scientists don’t know for sure what kind of negative impact is possible.