Lonnie R. West

Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute just did something most of us would think impossible: they have successfully created a new life-form completely from custom-written DNA code.

How did they do it? It was kind of scary in it's simplicity. They took a computer file of a DNA string of a basic bacteria, and edited it to have the characteristics they wanted. And just to make it unique, the scientists encoded their own names and some quotes from James Joyce (and others) into the DNA!

That computer file was then sent to a DNA sequencing company that basically mixed chemicals together to create the DNA.

The end result: and entirely new, never-seen-before bacteria that is not only alive, but is reproducing.

I'll admit... This scares me a bit.

When cloning was first demonstrated, it raised all kinds of ethical issues and was right up there with stem-cell research. But this is something unprecedented: we've created a new form of life!

While everyone is going to be talking about ethics for a while, I have another thought: is this the point where we've let the genie out of the bottle?

Consider that for all our vast knowledge, we are still very much in our infancy.

We have ~just~ realized a little over a decade ago that by throwing antibiotics at everything that we have killed off the "normal" bugs, and they have mutated and grown resistant and turned into super-bugs that antiobiotics can't kill.

This is where MRSA came from.

It wasn't that long ago at all that the first thing a doctor prescribed was an antibiotic when a kid was sick. And walking through your local grocery store reveals that almost everything has incorporated bacteria-killing chemicals because the media has pounded to death that bacteria is bad for you.

Now mind you, I do want my dish-soap to kill bacteria. But how far is too far?

The point I am trying to make is this: life on this planet is symbiotic. We have all evolved to live in harmony with all the bacteria and viruses that are in this world. Our bodies are filled with bacteria that help us process food and waste products, and we would NOT be able to live without them.

We are all part of a intertwined biological ecology that has taken eons to come into the balance that we currently enjoy. Our bodies know how to handle all of this, and we react predictably to the "normal" bacteria that have been on this planet for eons. Even the "bad" bacteria are necessary, and trying to completely isolate ourselves from it only weakens us.

In fact, it has been proven time and time again that constant and repeated exposure to low levels of these harmful bacteria actually HELP our immune systems.

Here's the rub: We are already having a hard time dealing with bacteria that's already been on this planet longer than we have because we (in our arrogance) thought we could simply kill it off and it would go away. Instead, we made it stronger, more lethal, and damn near impossible to kill.

So... What happens when we create new bacteria that have never existed anywhere before? Something our bodies, and our eco-system have no idea how to interpret or react to?

What worries me is that someone might (accidentally, as part of an experiment) create a new form of bacteria that will make the bubonic plague look like a small cold by comparison.

What if it replicates and mutates easily, is resistant to antibiotics, and is so completely new and foreign that our own bodies do not realize it's infected until it's too late?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of science and the breakthroughs we have made in understanding our world. But this is one that scares me a bit.

Nuclear war never really worried me very much, but the possibility that we inadvertently unleash a rogue man-made bacteria or virus that ends up killing millions is a very, very real possibility.