[extropy-chat] Hazard a guess?

Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com
Tue Nov 16 19:35:12 UTC 2004


At 02:16 PM 11/16/2004 -0500, Mark Walker wrote:

>how easy would it
>be to genetically engineer a human zygote _today_ and go undetected.


On another list Robert Bradbury recently commented:

=================

I've known how to (and had a business
plan) for ~4 years now to do "whole genome synthesis".  It is generally
feasible using current technologies and the synthesis of a "new" genome
could be done quite cheaply provided the proper investments were made.
(There actually exist two companies working in this area but they don't
understand things to the extent I do.)

Cloning is actually a stop-gap measure.  What you actually want to be
able to do is synthesize entirely new "perfect" off-the-shelf genomes.
That capability would completely bypass the entire cloning debate.

If you think *cloning* has the conservatives climbing the walls wait
until we get to process of the synthesis of whole genomes (e.g.
"life" itself).  It implies the effective "dethroning" of God
(e.g. "and so God created humans -- big deal -- humans can do it too") --
and we could do it today but they don't understand that yet.

And it would be very difficult to stop this.  All of this is small scale
laboratory technology (of the type I built in the mid-90's with several
million dollars of my own money -- it is most likely cheaper today and
will get even cheaper in the future).

This is not like you need a huge factory full of uranium centrifuges
that you can see on a satellite image.  Enforcement would be a nightmare.
You would effectively have to turn every country that agrees to this
into a police state.

Plus countries like China, Japan, Korea, etc. which are a little more logical
and will think of the value of having the technologies to their economies
completely outweighs any "UN Ban" based on "Christian" reasoning.

Its CNN -- they get value out of raising the controversial issues.
They don't actually apply logic to whether or not said issues are
significant or will make any difference in the course of the development
of humanity.  For that you need to take a step back and listen to someone
like Charlie Rose (on PBS) or Thomas Friedman (NY Times) -- people who
actually really think to a fair amount of depth about things and whether
or not they are relevant.

========================

The approach where a de novo human genome is compiled from spare units is 
something that nobody seems to discussing, let alone the next step (which 
Greg Egan placed in a story at least a decade ago) of first deleting the 
supposed junk introns. This will *really* get the fussbudgets in a rage 
(and I'm not sure that I mightn't be one of them, given the unforeseeable 
dangers for any person so created).

Damien Broderick





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