Information Related to "2010: Another Step Toward Frankenstein"
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2010: Another Step Toward FrankensteinScience magazine recently announced a significant step toward creating artificial life. The breatkthrough has caused many scientists to praise the potential for beneficial research. Others, however, warn of the potential threat of a technology we do not yet fully understand or can control. What might this open door lead to in the not-so-distant future?by Mario Seiglie"After days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labor, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils" (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, Chapter 4). The creation of an animated being is thus described in the famous novel Frankenstein. Now the prestigious magazine Science announced in May that the first significant step toward creating artificial life has occurred. Craig Venter, the principal scientist, named this new life form Synthia. The Economist magazine heralded the breakthrough with these words, "In the end there was no castle, no thunderstorm and definitely no hunchbacked cackling lab assistant. Nevertheless, Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith and their colleagues have done for real what Mary Shelley merely imagined. On May 20th, in the pages of Science, they announced that they had created a living creature" ("Genesis Redux," May 20, 2010). "The creation of a living being in a laboratory," says science editor Michael Hanlon, "is one of the staples of science fiction. Now it is a scientific fact. Yesterday's announcement of the birth of a 'synthetic cell'—made by injecting a bacterium shell with genetic material created from scratch by scientists—raises many questions... "[Craig Venter] began talking about making an artificial lifeform in the lab. Not a Frankenstein's monster, or even a mouse, but a bacterium, one of the simplest living organisms... The potential is huge—but so are the dangers. An artificial species, created in the lab, might not 'obey the rules' of the natural world... It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world's crop plants or even humanity itself" ("Artificial Life: Have Scientists Created a Monster?" www.dailymail.co.uk, May 21, 2010). Yet there is quite a bit of controversy about how significant Venter's creation really is. Bioengineer James Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project, questioned its importance and stated, "This is an important advance in our ability to re-engineer organisms, not make new life from scratch. Frankly, scientists don't know enough about biology to create life. Although the Human Genome Project has expanded the parts list for cells, there is no instruction manual for putting them together to produce a living cell. It is like trying to assemble an operational jumbo jet from its parts list—impossible. Although some of us in synthetic biology have delusions of grandeur, our goals are much more modest" ("Sizing Up the 'Synthetic Cell,'" www.nature.com, May 20, 2010). Regardless of how significant this accomplishment turns out to be, it unquestionably does open the door to a new world, as atomic energy once did in the 1940s, with the accompanying great potential for good and evil. Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, warned, "Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny. He is not merely copying life artificially or modifying it by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of God: Creating artificial life that could never have existed" (quoted by Fiona MacRae, "Scientist Accused of Playing God After Creating Artificial Life by Making Designer Microbe From Scratch—But Could It Wipe Out Humanity?" www.dailymail.co.uk, June 3, 2010). The Daily Mail article continues in reference to Dr. Savulescu, "He said the creation of the first designer bug was a step towards 'the creation of living beings with capacities and a nature that could never have naturally evolved.' The risks were 'unparalleled,' he added. And he warned: 'This could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm.'" So now humanity has found another way it can potentially destroy itself—by designing biological life-forms similar to computer viruses, but that can attack other living beings, including humans. We have seen what happened when man discovered how to design computer software. It wasn't long before some devious people used the knowledge to create malicious computer viruses. Can we be so naive to think biological computer software that can be programmed inside cells will only be used for benign purposes? Do we think the military and the business world will remain passive and not want to take advantage of this newfound ability? The Economist, in its article "And Man Made Life," admits this is an unsettling issue: "To create life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine spark, a vital essence. It may come as a shock, then, that mere mortals have now made artificial life... "Pedants may quibble that only the DNA of the new beast was actually manufactured in a laboratory; the researchers had to use the shell of an existing bug to get that DNA to do its stuff. Nevertheless, a Rubicon has been crossed. It is now possible to conceive of a world in which new bacteria (and eventually, new animals and plants) are designed on a computer and then grown to order. That ability would prove mankind's mastery over nature in a way more profound than even the detonation of the first atomic bomb... "Unfortunately and inevitably, some of those ideas [about creating artificial life] will be malicious. And the problem with malicious biological inventions—unlike, say, guns and explosives—is that once released, they can breed by themselves... No one now knows how easy it would be to turbo-charge an existing human pathogen, or take one that infects another type of animal and assist its passage over the species barrier. We will soon find out, though" (May 22, 2010, p. 11). Yes, we have passed the point of no return of genetic engineering. As God once said when He saw humanity's technological prowess grow by leaps and bounds as it built the Tower of Babel, "And this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them" (Genesis 11:6). So, on May 20, 2010, humanity announced it had unlocked another secret that promises to be as significant as nuclear power, which led to the development of the atomic bomb and man's lethal ability to wipe itself off the face of the earth. This fulfilled the description in Matthew 24:22, "And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened." In Mary Shelley's novel, Dr. Frankenstein had the best of intentions—he wanted to benefit mankind with his discovery of how to animate life—just as Dr. Venter appears to have done. Unfortunately, Dr. Frankenstein's technology overran his morality, and eventually what he created became something he could not control. From recent history we see humanity has not changed its proclivity to use new discoveries for good and evil, and the 20th century saw technology multiply humanity's destructive powers and horrific experiments in World War I, World War II and beyond. It now looks like 2010 will be a seminal year in prophecy, as Craig Venter and his colleagues claim they have created the first artificial living creature. Little do they realize they have reached another prophetic milestone. Their discovery demonstrates an even greater need for Christ to return and stop mankind's technological Tower of Babel from unleashing even further evils upon itself. WNP
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Keywords: genetic engineering synthetic life man-made life
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