Call for 'artificial life' DNA ban | Hacker News Reader

Call for 'artificial life' DNA ban

news.bbc.co.uk

15 pointsmattmaroon25 comments

Well, on a positive note, if they ban the research in the UK, it'll mean more biotech jobs for everyone else. :)

While this could potentially lead to very bad things, it could just as likely lead to a betterment of humanity. I think that, in a few years or so, the kidney-growth pill McCoy gave to the old lady in The Voyage Home could be possible.

I can imagine an organism that eats oil and poops something enviro-neutral would come in quite handy right now.

Let's hope that neutrality extends to fish-oil.

The problem is that those organisms will grow very quickly and are prone to mutations. You'd end up with a huge population of rapidly evolving critters, something you can never predict.

We have this problem without any DNA manipulation. Ever heard of MRSA?

They're not really equivalent. MRSA evolved in hospitals from whatever strains were resistant to drugs. Otherwise it's been in the environment for a while and there's not really an ecological risk. On the other hand, we have no idea how a completely synthetic life-form will end up in the environment. They could be just like other organisms, or we might unwittingly give them a huge advantage in some way that causes them to outcompete others.

We already have that - it's called mycoremediation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoremediation

Oyster mushrooms (yep, the ones you can buy in the store) do a great job.

Kidneys are actually more likely to be grown in vitro from your stem cells, using some sort of scaffolding material, and then implanted into you. They're one of the simpler organs, so I think they'll be one of the earlier spectacular applications of tissue engineering.

Still, I'd prefer swallowing a pill to an operation.

Whenever I see something like this, I ask myself: "should we have banned the use of fossil fuel when it was first being harnessed?"

The answer to myself is always: no.

I think the more apt question is: "should we have banned the use of nuclear tech when it was first being harnessed". Also no, at least for me, since I think it's one of the few viable alternative energy sources, but we wouldn't have needed a doomsday clock if we hadn't.

I'm pretty sure that we could kill off the human race with plenty of other weapons. Conventional explosives are not too nice to the human body. Neither are swords or pointy sticks, for that matter.

(The problem is not nuclear weapons, the problem is people that want to kill other people.)

Nuclear weapons are simply a shortcut, genocide and scorched earth tactics have always been prevalent in warfare - you just couldn't do both at once on such a grand scale.

The game changer that was nuclear weapons likely saved the planet. Instead of dropping real bombs, causing real fires, spreading real land mines and chemical agents, etc, that we had been building for a half-century . . . suddenly we stopped. There weren't any grand wars and there hasn't been since the end of WW2, the planet is truly quiet.

Nuclear weapons was almost like someone pulling a knife in a brawl and everyone backing away. We saw what the end result was and we didn't want it.

I love all the doomsday stuff, but really nuclear weapons are the greatest invention because by and large they ended warfare on the global scale.

For rational actors, nuclear weapons are great. The problem is, the irrational actors are starting to get them, and then mutually assured destruction doesn't buy us anything. There is no enemy to destroy.

I guess I'll believe that when we have evidence of irrational actors.

Do religious fanatics/suicide attackers not fall under that definition? (Serious question, I'm not sure how they're classified in that whole discussion)

Seems to me that fanatics usually serve their organization's rational purposes. Anger and rage are also rational, even when they result in self-harm; their perceived "irrationality" is the reason why it's not good to provoke someone. Such emotions are like a kind of mutually assured destruction, on a small scale.

Terrorist organizations etc. use such actors rationally, in order to generate fear, reaction, power by radicalizing their host societies, etc. They are rational actors, and are susceptible to MAD logic.

When we are at risk of colossal attack by insane individuals, we'll be in a much worse place.

Agreed, no Al Qaeda leader is going to deploy a single nuclear weapon on the US or other nuclear power without full and implicit knowledge that our nations opposition to this war will flip 100%.

I'm sorry, the reaction after 9/11 lead to a full blown invasion of two countries (regardless of any other motives behind the actions, it was the public opinion that allowed it to happen) and that was just a couple of buildings disappearing. If a nuke had been deployed in New York, the populace would only have been happy to let the government turn Afghanistan or Iraq into a few million square miles of radioactive desert glass.

The terrorist organizations themselves are acting logically by using illogical agents. The men who killed themselves on 9/11 weren't logical, but their actions were considering the masterminds behind the scheme. Right now if Al Qaeda got a nuclear weapon, they're still at a losing ratio of >1000:1. I'm sorry, but the reason the USSR went nuts building nukes was because the US already had hundreds developed by the time the USSR only had a dozen and it wasn't MAD logic it was suicide logic. Any deployment of nukes in the early stages of the cold war would have wiped them out. Similarly, a terrorist organization is only ever going to get its hands on a handful of nukes, it'll never have the 1000's required to destroy western civilization, so the deployment of a nuke only guarantees the destruction of their own.

I'm sorry, but Islamic Terrorism really doesn't instill fear if every Muslim just bit the atomic dust. I'd hate to see a world where we wiped out countless countries mainly because of religious association, but I really don't see anything else happening if a terrorist organization detonated a nuke in NYC or any other city.

I'm not sure why you're saying sorry. The point of Al Qaeda attacking NY was to provoke an over-reaction. It radicalizes the Muslim world, and strengthens their hand politically. And the same is why they would be very unlikely to use a nuke.

Banning it in one country simply guarantees that another country achieves supremacy first, leaving the UK behind.

At least the UK will always be ahead of the world in TV Detector Van innovation.

Yeah, except all those hippies who can't afford their TV license fee also happen to have lava and fiberoptic lamps making that whole 'looking through your window to watch the reflected colour patterns' creepy shit kind of pointless.

I'm not in the UK, but I think they just scan for the intermediate frequency used by TV receivers. The receiver combines the TV signal with another signal that's something like 10 or 16 MHz away from the broadcast frequency, in a way that results in the TV signal being shifted down to ~10-16MHz, where it is easier to decode. Some of that additional signal leaks back through the antenna, or is otherwise emitted by the equipment. For example, to see if you're watching a station at 87MHz, they'd scan for emissions at 77 or 97MHz. No window spying necessary.

Corrections by those better versed than I in RF electronics and antenna theory are welcome.

The more we know the better. Research should not be banned.

That said, caution should be present with the application of radical new technologies. The nuclear test ban treaty seems like a net-win, for example.

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