This January Prometheus paid our era a call. Scientists (it was reported at the end of the month) have ‘announced the creation of a synthetic chromosome, knocking down one of the final hurdles to building the world’s first artificial life form’. In Maryland, at the institute of an American biologist and entrepreneur, Craig Venter, a team are now working on the final step to ‘create’ life. They aim to transplant into a cell the synthetic DNA they create, in the hope it will ‘boot up’ the cell and take control of its growth and reproduction.
At last. The breathing-into-clay of the Promethean fire; the insertion of the ghost into the machine. Already a name has been suggested for this putative organism, ‘Synthia’, the suggestion coming from ETC, a Canadian bioethics group who protest that Dr Venter is venturing where mankind should never go. ETC’s head said: ‘ For the first time, God has competition.’
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