“Man’s conquest of nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.”
- C.S. Lewis
Speak, then. This is not an age for timidity.
Cut. Off. Funding.
A Synth
“I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.”
- Malcolm “Cap’n Tightpants” Reynolds, “Serenity” . . . .
A realistic picture of the limitations of genome technology should be similarly reassuring. The truth is that scientists can’t even read the human genome yet — at least not the way we usually think of reading. They merely call out the letters, the way a child does who can’t yet read. Actual reading goes beyond letter recognition to understanding, which is in short supply when it comes to the human genome.
...
I have a hard time believing that, and our understanding keeps getting better.
“Within a hundred years of physical and chemical science, men will know what the atom is. It is my belief when science reaches this stage, God will come down to earth with His big ring of keys and will say to humanity, ‘Gentlemen, it is closing time.’ “
— Marcellin Berthelot (25 October 1827 – 18 March 1907) French chemist and politician
While we know most of what the atom is, we don’t know it all. However, if the hubris of the Tower of Babel brought on the dispersion of mankind, I image that the attempt at ‘Constructing a Human Genome in the Lab’ may very well be an indication of the imminence of ‘Gentlemen, it is closing time.’
Batty: Why not?
Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutation give rise to revertant colonies, like rats leaving a sinking ship; then the ship... sinks.
Batty: What about EMS-3 recombination?
Tyrell: We've already tried it - ethyl, methane, sulfinate as an alkylating agent and potent mutagen; it created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before it even left the table.
Batty: Then a repressor protein, that would block the operating cells.
Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication; but it does give rise to an error in replication, so that the newly formed DNA strand carries with it a mutation - and you've got a virus again... but this, all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Batty: But not to last.
Correcting genes from damage or disorder is one thing. This is just insane and something somebody with a God complex would try. Total immoral.
God: “Go Make Your Own Dirt.”
Does this mean they have thrown in the towel of monitoring lab experiments for 60 years to see if the DNA molecule will self-form out of amino acids? Are they conceding on random formation by becoming the intelligent designers?
Humans always want to be the creator (in the name of science), which makes me always think of the Frankenstein novel. This can’t possibly go wrong (sarc).