Any thoughts on scientists now creating life?

[cjrose]

Just one thought. It isn't "creating life" until they learn to create the cell. That ain't happening.

Oh really? With the ability to put things together atom by atom you don't think that humanity will ever reach this milestone?

We're still a very long way off from being able to snthesize a living cell. We are part of the way there, though. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say we're at least 50 years away from being able to create true life in the lab from scratch. Hopefully, the human race will be ready for it by the time that day comes.

On the other hand, the Human Genome Project was supposed to take a full 15 years, so I could be wrong...

Help .... one day they might actually create a scientist

Why do you think we invented cloning?

[Joshua-777]

Oh really? With the ability to put things together atom by atom you don't think that humanity will ever reach this milestone?

Will it someday be possible? Sure. Will this day come before we manage to completely destroy the environment, blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust, die of a genetically-engineered plague, etc? Probably not.

I agree, well from my view, It's headed into the tribulation period, where this world will be destroyed, From your view, we're headed into destruction. Hmmm, ah well I'll be chillin with Jesus when it does happen.

[artsylady]

Well look what they had to work with.

Years of scientific research, hundreds of intelligent minds,

a genetic map (copied reproduction of the real thing) and a cell.

As well, they probably a multitude of manipulated conditions (like when they tried before, using artificial light instead of real light because real light can kill amino acids.

But..... even knowing all of this, we're all just supposed to beleive that once upon a time, a long long time ago, it happened with no help from nobody.

I can just hear their logic.

"Look! Look what we did here after millions of hours of research from hundreds of intelligent minds, manipulated conditions, a cell and a genetic map, we've shown exactly how an accident like life can actually happen!"

The article doesn't say how long this whatever it was lived either. They usually don't.

But..... even knowing that, we're all just supposed to beleive that once upon a time, a long long time ago, it happened and it lived and it eventually turned into creatures that reproduced to the point of evolving into human beings.

[Apoptosis]

Is it just me or did nobody notice the article is from 2003? It's kind of old, we do this kind of stuff almost everyday now in biomedical research labs.

Well look what they had to work with.

Years of scientific research, hundreds of intelligent minds,

a genetic map (copied reproduction of the real thing) and a cell.

As well, they probably a multitude of manipulated conditions (like when they tried before, using artificial light instead of real light because real light can kill amino acids.

But..... even knowing all of this, we're all just supposed to beleive that once upon a time, a long long time ago, it happened with no help from nobody.

I can just hear their logic.

"Look! Look what we did here after millions of hours of research from hundreds of intelligent minds, manipulated conditions, a cell and a genetic map, we've shown exactly how an accident like life can actually happen!"

The article doesn't say how long this whatever it was lived either. They usually don't.

But..... even knowing that, we're all just supposed to beleive that once upon a time, a long long time ago, it happened and it lived and it eventually turned into creatures that reproduced to the point of evolving into human beings.

The hundreds of intelligent minds and years of scientific research is used to find out how it happened over the million to billions years and present it in a form on a time scale that is more familiar to human reality, which is on the scale of years and decades.

The number of people and the amount of time spent on this is still nothing compared to the geological time that Nature had to tinker to produce the effect that we call life. By saying that these scientist could not reproduce something in decades that nature achieve in billions of years is evidence of the existance of a creator is a fallancy at logic. In fact, if you gave these scientists just a few more decades (a microsecond on a geological time) im sure they would achieve what nature could not in a few million years.

[artsylady]

It's not only the intelligence factor involved. It's also manipulated conditions and the availablity of a cell and a genetic map.

How did these other very useful and mandatory items find their way into the pond? And do you think there was artificial light back then? If yes, where did it come from?

It's not JUST the fact that there are many intelligent minds behind it.

[Questioner]

The hundreds of intelligent minds and years of scientific research is used to find out how it happened over the million to billions years and present it in a form on a time scale that is more familiar to human reality, which is on the scale of years and decades.

The number of people and the amount of time spent on this is still nothing compared to the geological time that Nature had to tinker to produce the effect that we call life. By saying that these scientist could not reproduce something in decades that nature achieve in billions of years is evidence of the existance of a creator is a fallancy at logic. In fact, if you gave these scientists just a few more decades (a microsecond on a geological time) im sure they would achieve what nature could not in a few million years.

You, sir, are guilty of reading about a certain blind watchmaker

[thehumblethinker]

At first I thought 'meh - this is no different from scientists creating genetically modified tomatoes', but in fact it does seem like they created a new lifeform by splicing chemicals rather than making tweaks to an existing one. I suppose the extreme simplicity of viruses is what makes this possible.

It's a good demonstration of how at the ultra-simple level, the difference between life and chemical compounds is a relatively short hop. And of course once you have a self-replicating organism you can have evolution and all the complexity that ultimately arises from that.

[tdrehfal]

Maybe this is being covered elsewhere in the forum, but it caught my attention. http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-...life-usat_x.htm

I believe that God is the Creator, but this is- weird.

It would be good if it were a 'selective' virus that only infects cancer cells, or harmful bacteria. It would infect all those cells and then just die.

I doubt that could ever be created though.

[SaturnV]

I recall reading in Scientific American a few years ago about researchers attempting that very thing.

Viruses have actually been used to fight bacterial infections. There was a really interesting Nova special on PBS about doctors in the Former Soviet Republic of Georgia using bacteriophages-viruses that only attack certain strains of bacteria-to fight infection. Given the growing problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria, phages may very well be used as an alternative to antibiotics in the future.

[Guest fishwithfeets]

I don't see anything nesessarily wrong with creating life. If I were to create a plant with all the required nutritional value for a human, make it easy to grow and easy to harvest and disseminate it throughout the world I could save billions of lives over the next hundred years. What is wrong with that? Creating life is no more always wrong than creating a machine. It could be used to save lives or harm people, or for even more benign uses.

Another of you made a quip about cloning. There is nothing any more ethically wrong with cloning than in vitro fertilization, as long as we can get it to work without having so many of the fetus's die. If we could perfect the process there would be few applications for cloning humans, but I think it is of minor consequence if we do. Cloned humans are just as bit as human as any of us, the only difference is how the genetic material got into the egg.