Posted on 05/21/2010 6:58:36 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
IT'S ALIVE!!!
Visions of Dr. Frankenstein creating his monster came to mind with the news yesterday that artificial life had been "created" in the laboratory. Unfortunately, for the mainstream media hypemeisters, a scientist has tossed cold water upon that bold assertion. And who was the killjoy scientist raining on the MSM parade hyping this event? Why, it was the scientist, J. Craig Ventner himself, who was being credited in the media for being a latter day Dr. Frankenstein as you can see in this San Diego Union-Tribune report:
J. Craig Venter, the La Jolla biologist who played a key role in decoding the human genome, said Thursday that his team has made the world’s first “synthetic cell,” an advance that eventually could help and hurt humanity.
Venter and his colleagues basically figured out how to design a bacterial cell on a computer. Then they used genetic engineering and chemicals that are essential for life to produce an entity that’s novel but not yet a truly living version of anything that occurs naturally.
This “is the first self-replicating species that we have on the planet whose parent is a computer,” said Venter, who was careful to add that he had not created new life from scratch.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
“Venter, who was careful to add that he had not created new life from scratch.”
Decent of him - maybe we can get him into the White House, since its current occupant is entirely likely to say the opposite.
Colonel, USAFR
They put new DNA into existing cells, and they replicated.
It’s impressive on its own. But it’s not “new life.”
Incidentally, no, they did not ‘create’ life.
The materialists atheists just want to take God out of the equation!
The materialists atheists just want to take God out of the equation!
Scientist - "First you take a handful dirt"
God - "No, you get your own dirt"
Glad to see this scientist has the good sense not to go along with the lamestream media’s hype.
I guess journalism school is full of underachivers these days. Since if any of them had actually read the contents of their OWN articles it clearly explained no ‘new’ life had been created.
Reporters can screw up the report of a one car funeral!
Isn't that supposed to be "God - 'No, make your own dirt'"?
Re: The materialists atheists just want to take God out of the equation.
I remember reading in an article about 60 years ago that if man ever does create life, God will step in and announce “closing time genlemen”!
They would rather think that after 85 years or so, they will cease to exist?
Real comforting thought...
What the press, most people, and even most scientists don’t realize is that the bulk of inheritable material received by a newly conceived multi-cell organism (or a single-cell animal created by binary fission) is not the genetic material itself, but the “other stuff” in the cell. The genetic material itself is little more than CNC-like instructions for making various proteins. The “other stuff” is the actual factory for processing the instructions, and this other stuff is far more complex and contains far more information than the genetic material itself.
Furthermore, these two parts would have had to have been designed together from the very start, and neither one could have been made independently of the other, no more than it would be possible to independently invent the machine code used by an Itanium processor and the processor chip itself (and expect them to work together usefully), though these two designs contain infinitesimally less information than a living cell and its genetic material.
Designing and synthesizing some genetic material that can be made to function in an existing cell is quite an achievement, but is still equivalent to a cave man making a functioning machine-language boot loader, with no idea in the world how the CPU chip works or what an operating system is.
Certainly what was done does not count as creating life, not even close. Now if mankind could start with a shelf full of chemicals, and from that synthesize a completely self-replicating, self-sustaining cellular organism, then you’d be walking the walk, rather than just talking the talk!
ping
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