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Comment by deaton | Hacker News Reader

It is extremely dangerous and we don't need studies to know this. Consider a bacteria which your immune system cannot see. Such a thing would kill you very very quickly. Now, consider that our immune systems are composed of molecules of the normal chirality. They would be completely unable to recognize the molecules mirror life would use.

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Also our immune system will be (for good reasons) killing off anything else it encounters, which means hopes like "I'm sure it'll get out-competed by $regular_bacteria in the water" are foolish.

Imagine a mirror-bacteria that does nothing directly against your cells, and seems benign at first glance... but it will slowly grow in your bloodstream and simply thicken it until your heart fails. Everyone in the world forever on artificial dialysis would not be survivable.

The immune system attacks everything that is weird, it does not check that it is currently not misbehaving.

One of the major concerns about "mirror life" is that it is, in a particular way, so extremely weird that normal processes don't apply.

Bacteria in your body doesn't need to be entirely stealthy or entirely invulnerable or entirely toxic to kill you. Just "enough". Jellified-blood with inflammation would still be fatal.

Being of the opposite chirality doesn't magically make antibodies pass through you. Antibodies can and do bind molecules of all sizes and chiralities.

This is precisely the reason why we shouldn't do this. Too dangerous.

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