Re: edge.org and wrong turns

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Hi Rodrigo,

 

I think you write English rather well-- you don't give yourself enough credit.

 

I'm glad you posted that link here-- thank you. I have heard from many people about edge.org and I took a long look at it, a while back. I think it started out as a great idea but, somewhere along the way, a more limited view of what "science" is defined as became the set of parameters for what is discussed there. It's a very prosaic definition, very much in line with reductionist mainstream thinking. As a result, it seems to me that edge.org has become a rarified group of people talking about stuff they think is on "the edge" but which misses the real frontier completely. For example, it's clear that Venter equates genome with life, but does he even have any clue why "genome" exists? Or how?

 

Venter, therefore, talks about "creating life" but he's cheating: he's using the organization of a living organism and basically doing genetic engineering. I wonder how he plans to "write the new genome"... I bet he's going to Frankenstein it from all sorts of other organisms. He can do a whole lot of mischief with his work, and it's the same sort of mischief we are already seeing with genetically engineered crops, etc. I find it pretty scary. But he's not even close to "creating" a living organism; he's just tinkering with organisms that already exist.

 

Cheers,

Judith

PS: Columbia; home of Shakira! I've been relearning Spanish because of her. She's amazing.

----- Original Message -----

From: Rodrigo Peláez

To: ***

Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 8:45 PM

Subject: [ROSEN] J. Craig Venter

I subscribe to this list one and half a year ago. I do not participate in it because I only can read English. I don?t speak nor do write it. I live in Colombia South America, and my native language is Spanish. I have learned a lot from all of you. Thanks very much.

I am reading and studying Life Itself and Essays on Life Itself.

 

The following appears today in the WSJ. The full story is in www.edge.org

 

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Biologist J. Craig Venter once raced the U.S. government to complete the decoding of the human genome. Now, after a maverick career studying the code of life, Dr. Venter has a new goal: life itself.

Along with two veteran collaborators, Dr. Venter hopes to become the first to whip up a made-to-order bacterium. Normally, new life is created via reproduction, with each generation passing its genes on to the next. But Dr. Venter aims to bypass that process by manufacturing a complete set of genes, or genome, of a single-cell bacterium in his laboratory. This man-made genome would be installed inside a bacterium whose own genes have been removed.

By creating such a life form, Dr. Venter?s researchers think they may come closer to understanding what life is and how scientist can manipulate it for the benefit of humankind. New artificial species could open avenues for industrial production of drugs, chemicals or clean energy.

?This is the step we have all been talking about. We?re moving reading the genetic code to writing it,? Dr. Venter says, swiveling in his chair at his sprawling scientific headquarters here.

 

(Antonio Regado, ?Next Dream for Venter: Create Set of Genes From Scratch?, The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2005; Page A1.