Craig
Venter and his research group have created an artificial virus
in two weeks time and put it in a cell. The virus immediately
started reproducing itself. The US Department of Energy helped
pay for part of the study.
Some
hope that scientists could create viruses which clean up the
environment. Others warn that creating viruses which do things
like these is "playing God" and that could have bad
consequences. And if viruses can be created, what about life
forms?
Ventner says scientists aren't close to creating
life forms. His team replicated the genome of a bacteriophage
which is a simple life form. Scientists see a day in the
future where genomes can be created on a computer and then put
to work.
One person, group or a mad scientist makes a whole
bunch of lets say, robots :p And at first they're doing their
work until they go out of control except in the TV shows
there's always a super hero lol How about Venter's team make a
super hero first before "playing god" ;p
If some mad scientist decides to do an experiment on
bad viruses before long we'll have fatal viruses roaming
around that reproduce faster than they can be
killed.
By its very definition, a virus is any organism that
replicates itself. Be it with the aid of a host or by
themselves, they all posses the ability to replicate. This is
nothing new.
Perhaps a little alarmist, but if you're confident then
you don't know something. http://lifeboat.com/ Eek. I don't know about
everyone else, but I dislike the idea of earth becoming a
masssive grey blob because of self replicating
nanotechnology.
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