July 2010 - Evangelicals Now - Christian Newspaper

In May, the media had one of their regular hypes and used huge fonts to announce that a scientist had created artificial life.

Of course, often the subsequent article gives away the truth of the situation, but the uninformed public has gone away with the false headline. The Times scientific editor began his article by declaring: ‘Synthetic life has been created in the laboratory in a feat of ingenuity…’ He pointed out that this ‘could yield microbes that make vaccines and algae that turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon biofuels’.

Bringing reality

The following day, Professor Raymond Tallis brought some reality into the situation with his headline, ‘Synthetic hysteria more like’. The editor of the journal Artificial Life commented that this was a ‘defining moment in biology’! The science editor of the Daily Mail wrote: ‘The creation of a living being in a laboratory is one of the staples of science fiction. Now it is a scientific fact’. The scientist responsible for the work declared: ‘This takes us across the border into a new world’.

This scientist is Dr. Craig Venter, of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland and California. He is already known in the scientific world as a contributor to the remarkable work of decoding the human genome. So what has he done (and what has he not done)?

Synthia

Described reasonably simply, he took the genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma mycoides, and, using yeast, modified it (by removing 14 of its genes) and then transplanted it into another bacterium. This host bacterium, Mycoplasma capricolum, was deprived of its own genome and replaced by the modified form. So that they could be sure that the replacement had taken place, they introduced a short DNA marker to enable them to monitor the process. The modified bacterium reproduced itself. This is the ‘synthetic life’ about which the media have mused. Venter called this new bacterium Synthia!

Intelligent design

As Prof. Tallis comments, ‘[Venter] has synthesised DNA from basic chemicals; but lone DNA is not life’. (DNA is the chemical name for the genes.) In fact, it is another example of the process long discussed and debated: genetic engineering or genetic modification (GM foods and all that!).

Venter started with a bacterium and ended with a modified bacterium. In fact, without the complex internal structure of the cell of the host bacterium, even this modified DNA would be useless. The cell is made up of many parts, all of which are necessary to process the information held by the gene.¹ The machinery necessary for the cell to operate and use the DNA already existed.

The team have achieved something remarkable by intelligent design, but they did not create ‘life’. Life was already in the cell into which the modified genome was transplanted. The modified cell was the fruit of 15 years’ work and cost over £25 million.

Dr. Venter and his team wrote an editorial in the New Scientist in which they set the record straight.² They noted: ‘We did not create life from scratch … Nor did we design and build a new chromosome from scratch … we synthesised a modified version … The result is not an “artificial” life form; it is a living, self-replicating cell that most microbiologists would find hard to distinguish from the progenitor cell’.

Dr. Ben Davis of Oxford commented: ‘We are quite a long way from artificial life’. As Dr. Stephen Hayes, a medical doctor, has put it: ‘They may have reprogrammed a bacterium, they have not created life, only tinkered with it. There is but One who can create life’.

Cause for concern?

Some have already described this work as ‘man playing at God’. What are our limitations? Where does the concept of man being made in the image of God, the Creator, allow us to go?

As we have already indicated, in some ways this is an extension of the long-standing principle of genetic engineering. Plant and animal breeders have used the technique (not universally favoured, of course) to produce new strains to fight hunger. The issues raised in that context apply here. Can we control the modified host? What are the risks of a dangerous bacterium (in this case) breaking out into the environment? What are the potentials for bioterrorism?

Already critics are calling for tighter regulation of such work and emphasising the need for licences to be issued for research. We have seen, in other areas of life, how benefits can be manipulated to harmful applications. For example, nuclear processes can be used to fight cancer and provide energy, but they can be used for warfare, too. How confident can we be of our ability to control this new ‘weapon’? Even Venter admits that in their research they had 99 failures for every single success.

A success like this attracts big money from those who see the potential for profit. Apparently Venter is already working with Exxon Mobil to produce biofuels from algae and another organisation to produce vaccines.

What is life?

A fundamental question arises from this work and the claims made by some: what is ‘life’? Venter said his work changed his ‘view of the definition of life and how life works’.

If we are ever able to assemble all the chemicals involved in a living cell and pack them into a cell wall (even that is a highly complex structure!), will we have life in the cell? After all, a corpse a few minutes after death will have this ‘structure’, but not life. The medical dilemma of when death has occurred illustrates this in a very practical way.

I would suggest that this is a theological problem which is of great importance to the scientist. At creation, God provided life to the biological structures: ‘He breathed into the animals and into man the “breath of life”’ (Genesis 1.30; 2.7). That feature, life, has been transmitted through the fertilised egg of every creature from that moment. It has not been ‘injected’ into each generation but passed on from parent to offspring until removed at death.

The issues here are complex, of course. What, for example, differentiates plant life from animal life? What is the difference between animal life and human life? Human beings are distinguished from the animal kingdom in Scripture by being made in the ‘image of God’. This is why human life is sacred.

Conclusions

God said, concerning man, ‘now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them’ (Genesis 11.6). It is important that we be alert to the moral dilemma which faces us and encourage those with the ability to control such research to do so in accordance with the laws of God.

JHJP

References

1. Two good introductions to this amazing complexity are The Cell’s Design by Fazale Rana (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, 2008) and Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer (Harper One, New York, 2009).
2. J. Craig Venter et al, New Scientist, May 29 2010, page 3.

Artificial life - or not?