Good News Line - May 2010: page 1 | page 2 | page 3
Great Expectations: New Life for Old?
As a political anorak I have followed the goings on during our recent election with great interest. However, since the actual count, two events have caught my attention. One, the recent hype regarding Craig Venter and his claim to have created “new life” and the other, the emergence of our first peacetime coalition government since the First World War. Both events threaten; or should I say promise, to change the way we live our lives. And change can be, to some, rather unsettling.
Firstly, let me reassure you from a scientific standpoint that Dr Venter’s claim is not true. He has not “created” new life but only produced an artificial instruction set for the most simple of organisms; a bacterium. He has not created or made the cell itself: that is a far, far more complex a task. And I firmly believe that man will never be able to do that!
Continued on page 2...
 |
|
