The concern when writing general interest stories about scientific topics is that you will either a) alienate an unsophisticated reader by maintaining a serious

The concern when writing general interest stories about scientific topics is that you will either a) alienate an unsophisticated reader by maintaining a serious tone or b)alienate sophisticated readers by trivializing a serious topic using a whimsical tone. I am not sure an idealized middle ground really exists. That we are discussing the article on ycombinator probably reveals that we can only speak to the interests of one of those two groups (presumably b). I am unsure whether Swombat is more infuriated with the general unconcerned tone of the article or the actual paragraph (s)he dissects. In either case, the concerns for this particle application of virus-based technology are minimal. As pointed out, the genetic modifications are small, the viruses are fragile, and the materials used are ions in water. Though we (humans and most mammals) live in symbiosis with many types of bacteria, bacteriaphages are generally a species-specific predator. M13 will not consume your digestive bacteria any more than a polar bear would hunt krill. Gray goo, though a well used and thought-out science fiction conceit, is about as likely as the Decepticons in this case. Again, most gray goo concepts (there are dozens) require a fairly resilient mechanism that consumes a wide-variety of materials and converts them into more goo (or goo-related materials). The M13, modified and self-replicating though it may be, has a narrow range of consumables (iron phosphate and SWNTs) and is fairly easy to kill off. In fact, it is unclear whether M13, when modified, is sustainable outside of lab conditions. In general, I feel that most media are too quick to produce alarmist articles in relation to new technology, and that anti-alarmist articles (even ones lacking character) are a welcome balance to the discussion.