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Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life
- carapace 10y agoA four-billion-year old, incredibly intricate, non-linear (replicator!) system, the only one in the known Universe, that we all depend on utterly, and that we are only beginning to understand, should not be tinkered with willy-nilly. This is a very scientific viewpoint. I'm not superstitious nor am I ignorant. Research should proceed apace, but deploying GMOs into the world should be the tool of last resort, used only when we are desperate and can't do anything else. Synthetic biology is Pandora's Box, not a toy chest. We should have a moratorium on GMOs (outside the research lab) for at least several centuries. It will take us at least that long to get anything like the necessary knowledge to do so responsibly. The folks that want to proceed with GMOs and synthetic biology (outside of the research lab) have no real basis for their insistence on safety. It's a kind of faith. Usually not stated, these folks have faith that their GMOs are safe, and further that most GMOs in the future will be safe and any that aren't will be dealt with... "It's fine. It will be fine." That's what disturbs me most about the arguments against a cautious approach to GMO deployment, that it's fundamentally a faith-based position but they are shrouded in scientific-ist trappings.