*Life Extension technologies (that everyone would have been able to afford).

This is a quick supplimental post for a larger one about Neocommunism being used to prevent the masses from being able to extend their lives and drive up population.

Ignorance Is Futile:

This is by no means an exhaustive tell all about the realm of life extension, but instead to show potentially economical therapies that in many cases wouldn’t even count as “transhumanism”. The new ‘field’ of life extension involves a wide array of science and technologies. Instead its to summarize some semi-recent news items that suggest that life extension could end up being affordable to average people, especially thru the law of accelerating returns and economics of scale.

The idea for many is that we’ll not just slow the aging process, but instead we’ll be able to reverse it and live indefinite lifespans. From studying people with aging disorders scientists believe they’ve identified genes that regulate aging. So between what that knowledge can yield and the rest of it they have a pretty compelling case that lifespans beyond 120 years can be achieved. This creates a population problem, if at least certain forms of it can become affordable to the masses.

So this post will just list some headlines of recent that suggest such an affordable outcome might be feasible, in short time even. The field is way beyond some of this stuff. Take a deeper look thru Technut News and elsewhere for a more comprehensive listing of news examples.

Anti-aging pill to turn back the clock

Anti Aging Enzymes In Your Drinking Water

Bio-Printing Technology To Produce Functional Human Organs

Senecavirus Structure Revealed – Kills Cancer 10,000 Times Better Than Chemo

Hoping Two Drugs Carry a Side Effect: Longer Life

Life Extension From Caloric Restriction… In A Pill!

Skin Transformed Into Stem Cells

Scientists create stem cells for 10 disorders

Researchers create heart and blood cells from reprogrammed skin cells

Cheap Pill Lets You Eat Burgers Without Getting Fat

Double Your Lifespan with a Drug that Mutates Your Ribosomes

Simple powder to beat 2400 genetic diseases

Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years

The super vaccine that protects you from all types of flu for LIFE

Anti-Aging Drugs Could Change the Nature of Death

Elixer Of Youth Through A Simple Injection?

Life Extension Pill Tested In Humans

Drugs turn ‘couch potato’ mice into long-distance runners

Resveratrol: Elixer of Youth?

*Google’s 23andMe DNA Databank is Targeting Children.

Ignorance Is Futile:

Any good social engineer knows that to ensure the success of questionable new agendas it’s vital to target children for systematic desensitization. You see this indoctrination in Global Warming alarmism, militaristic Christian Zionism (must see), UN “One World” government school campaigns, Israeli Zionist imperialism (see photo below), Islamic terrorism, cameras in school bathrooms, Obama’s “National Security Force”, Google’s mobile-device GPS tracking, and Homeland Security partnering with Sesame Street, to name a handful.

23andMe is the pet project of Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife, Anne Wojcicki. It’s geared as a personal genomic service, and it’s web home is built as a social networking site.

One interesting thing in the 23andMe children indoctrination context is a view of their lobby at their Mountain View headquarters. In it is a sort of DNA shrine that has a “Dino” doll, and amongst other things a childrens DNA mad science laboratory playset. When I first seen it in the video I thought it was part of their promotion line, but it turns out to be made by the Discovery Store. But none-the-less we can still see the evidence of their operation being in-part geared towards children, and you can bet that it is no accident considering Google is at the forefront in neuromarketing and behavioral marketing and so on.

But the bigger story is 23andMe’s participation in their local area, where in May they targeted the Girl Scouts’ Golden Gate Bridging which had more than 7,000 girls from eight states in attendance. They didn’t just do the walk with them, but they also had a booth set up where they encouraged the kids to ““translate” their names into the genetic code and then use colored beads to represent their new “DNA aliases” on a zipper pull (click here for instructions). We had a great time meeting the girls and talking to them about DNA. They seemed to enjoy it too – as one girl assembled her zipper pull she exclaimed, “I never thought today would be so fun!”“

Let’s be serious: Who even thinks up something like a “zipper pull” for any reason other than to target children? At least many parents might not need be too concerned unless 23andMe offices start popping up in every city with staff members to march out into their communities.

So some may not see much harm in any of this, but please consider that this is an outgrowth of Google, whose agenda is to “gather” and “understand” “all of the worlds information”, including having virtually every human beings DNA code publicly searchable on Google. Like too many of Google’s agendas, this agenda coincides too conveniently with the Federal governments ambitions for a broad national DNA database (See here for links on both Google and the Feds). Reasons for such may include tracking purposes and advanced genetic behavioral analysis.

In light of 23andMe, the agenda feels right at home considering their love for mad scientist Craig Venter. Note that Craig is one of the prime subjects on my Google + Federal DNA Databank page. Craig is quite a character. He specializes in genomics and synthetic biology (creating entirely new synthetic lifeforms), and to the question about ‘playing God’ he says: “We’re not playing”, he overemphasizes, “we’re not playing”. I guess Craig is quite the celebrity as my new book, “Cracking the Genome”, explains that he was deeply responsible for the completion of the Genome Project some 5 years ahead of schedule.

He now crusades for out and open private DNA searchable on Google. Considering that, it couldn’t be more ironic that Sergey Brin recently finished having his genome studied via 23andMe and he discovered that he’s genetically predisposed to developing Parkinson’s Disease.

They expect us all to get used to the idea of knowing our genetic makeups, but how many of us are multi-billionaires who can afford to not drive ourselves mad in the prospect that we might later develop whatever. In “Cracking the Genome”, Francis Collins is quoted as saying: “All of us probably carry four or five really fouled up genes and another couple of dozen that are not so great and place us at at some risk for something”.

So what these people are proposing is that we should display perhaps our most intimate privacy data on Google, and then possibly learn that we have genetic markers for things beyond our means which the knowledge of alone could create psychological scenarios that lead to the development of such when it might not have happened anyways. Unless the cure exists for virtually all known diseases you can count me out for sure.

SEE ALSO:
*Mobile Google Android to condition people to embrace constant GPS tracking

Scientists produce neurons from human skin

Breakthrough could lead to revolutionary advances in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases

Quebec City, February 22, 2007 — Scientists from Université Laval’s Faculty of Medicine have succeeded in producing neurons in vitro using stem cells extracted from adult human skin. This is the first time such an advanced state of nerve cell differentiation has been achieved from human skin, according to lead researcher Professor François Berthod. This breakthrough could eventually lead to revolutionary advances in the treatment of neurodegenerative illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease. Berthod and his team described the method used to produce these neurons in a recent issue of the Journal of Cellular Physiology.

The researchers used skin obtained from plastic surgery procedures. They subjected these skin samples to various treatments in order to extract neuron precursor cells, which they then proceeded to cultivate in vitro. Skin itself does not contain neurons, which are hosted in the spinal cord, but contains only their extensions, called “axons.” The researchers’ challenge was thus to produce neurons from undifferentiated cells rather than multiply neurons from nerve cells.

Tests conducted by the researchers demonstrated that stem cells from the skin can proliferate and differentiate in vitro when placed in the appropriate environment. They progressively took on the oblong shape typical of neurons. At the biochemical level, researchers discovered that in the days following the start of the experiment, the cells began producing markers and molecules associated with the transmission of nerve impulse between neurons. “This suggests the beginning of synapse formation between neurons,” points out Professor Berthod.

In the short term, this breakthrough might have an impact in the field of neuroscience research. “Producing neurons from skin cells could solve the problem of human neural cell availability for research,” explains Berthod. “Since neurons do not multiply, researchers now have to rely on laboratory animal neurons to perform their experiments.”

In the longer term, the ability to produce neurons from skin cells opens the door to revolutionary therapeutic applications. “We could take a patient’s skin cells and use them to produce perfectly compatible neurons, thus eliminating the risk of rejection. We could then transplant these nerve cells in the diseased areas of the brain,” explains Berthod. “This type of procedure seems particularly interesting for diseases such as Parkinson’s, but it’s all theoretical for now. Before we can think of doing such things, we’ll have to improve nerve cell differentiation and prove that they can transmit nerve impulses,” concludes the researcher.

Gene therapy for ultimate human running speed and strength

Next Big Future:

Professor Peter Weyand, Southern Methodist University (Texas), known for his expertise in terrestrial locomotion and human and animal performance says that humans would soon have the ability to modify and greatly enhance muscle fibre strength. This would enable speeds of 45 miles per hour and 5 seconds times for 100 meters.

The fast four-legged runners or quadrupeds do seem to be advantaged versus bipeds in terms of the mechanics allowed by their anatomy. So to go even faster would require people to successfully adopt the running mechanics of four legged animals (running on hands and feet).

DARPA is also spending 3 billion to enhance strength and endurance. So endurance enhancements combined with the muscle speed enhancements could allow sprinting for an entire mile run. This would mean 80 seconds to run one mile. 1 minute and 20 seconds. It could also mean about 40 minutes to run a marathon.

MUCH MUCH MORE

Coatings to help medical implants connect with neurons

PHYSORG:

Plastic coatings could someday help neural implants treat conditions as diverse as Parkinson’s disease and macular degeneration.

The coatings encourage neurons in the body to grow and connect with the electrodes that provide treatment.

Jessica O. Winter, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State University described the research Thursday, August 21 at the American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia. She is also an assistant professor of biomedical engineering.

Worldwide, researchers are developing medical implants that stimulate neurons to treat conditions caused by neural damage. Most research focuses on preventing the body from rejecting the implant, but the Ohio State researchers are focusing instead on how to boost the implants’ effectiveness.
“We’re trying to get the nerve tissue to integrate with a device — to grow into it to form a better connection,” Winter said.

She and her colleagues are infusing water-soluble polymers with neurotrophins, proteins that help neurons grow and survive.

They are combining different polymers, some shaped like tiny spheres and fibers, to create composite coatings that release neurotrophins in a steady dose over time. The coatings also give nerves a scaffold to cling to as they grow around an implant.

The researchers coated two kinds of electrodes — one, a flat electrode used in retinal implants, and the other a cylindrical electrode array used in deep brain stimulation. The first is being used in experimental treatments for macular degeneration, while the second holds promise for suppressing tremors in people who have Parkinson’s disease.

The first coating they developed was made of polyethylene glycol-polylactic acid (PEGPLA) — a polymer often used in medical implants.

They placed the PEGPLA-coated electrodes in an array of cell cultures and measured how long the coating dispensed the neurotrophins, and how the cells responded.

They tested the retinal implants with retinal cells taken from rabbits, and the deep brain electrodes with PC12 cells — cells that grow into neurons — which were taken from cancer tissue in rats. In both cases, neurons grew from the cells and extended toward the electrodes.

Ideally, Winter explained, coatings would release neurotrophins for up to three months, since that’s the length of time that nerves in the body require to heal after implant surgery.

Using only PEGPLA, they found that the implant would release neurotrophins for three weeks.

That’s why the researchers are now combining it with two other biodegradable polymers: polylactic co-glycol acid (PLGA) microspheres and polycaprolactone (PCL) polyester nanofibers.

In this scheme, one polymer releases an initial burst of the chemical, then another polymer begins its release, and then another.

At the time of the American Chemical Society meeting, Winter and her team were still measuring the performance of the PEGPLA-PLGA-PCL coating. But the initial results look promising.

“To get long-term release, we think these multi-component systems are the way to go,” Winter said. “We can control the release by combining the materials in different ways, and we’re confident that we can extend the release time further — even to 90 days.”

As researchers work to develop neural implants, they face many challenges, including how to provide enough electrical stimulation to nerves without damaging surrounding tissue.

Because the coatings encourage neurons to connect directly with electrodes, this technology could allow researchers to develop smaller implants — ones that contain many densely packed electrodes to provide a high amount of stimulation in a small space, thus better preserving surrounding tissue.

Source: Ohio State University

Exploring Life Extension (Film) [Transhumanism Propaganda]

This I wrote in 2006; don’t even have time to proof read it:

We will either destroy ourselves this century, or we will obtain immortality. -Antonei Csoka, Ph.D.

You really have to watch this film to get the full scope, but Ill try to point out some things in this blog. I have heard the news mention this issue in the past, but overall this is yet another issue that is typically blacklisted from proper presentation.

I do understand some of the reasoning involved here, but I still think the extremists are possibly  selfish in all new ways in human history, and the ones who aren’t are too biased to realize that combining their dream with the real world is a recipe for disaster. Sure many have dreamed of it, but now that dream is manifesting into a reality that could destroy civilization, and it still goes beyond just mere immortality.

People need to understand that these extremists not only want to extend their lifespan, but most actually want to be immortal, and that is their goal. Some transhumanists are actually just extreme health people, but the rest seem to be these all-out extremists who dont just want immortality, but also extreme AI, mind uploading and to become posthuman entities. Im still waiting for someone to give me a good reason why the risk of AI is worth it or even necessary. Transhumanists typically want it because they know it will rapidly accelerate their goals (meaning forget about Moore’s Law).

Aging is a barbaric phenomenon that shouldnt be tolerated in polite society. -Aubrey de Grey Ph.D.

I must state that this is a very interesting issue, and I can see trying to live life healthfully and to our fullest, and maybe certain degrees of extension, but many these people are all out extremist fanatics. I like a lot of what they’re doing actually, but there has to be some point where we draw the line. They believe it is our destiny to become cyborgs, but is it also our destiny to nuke mankind off the face of the planet because we can? Their AI dream even brings all new meaning to the existence of our nukes.

Early on they show an elderly woman pushing a walker (probably for emotional effect). What they fail to mention is how long those adult diaper / cripple years will go on when they extend life to 200 years, meaning you might face hundreds of years of that stage of life. Maybe they’ll reverse Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s aging? Probably not, because they’ll surely be able to get keep us alive for a long time, but reversing the aging process altogether is really pushing it, and uncertain.

The extremists are personally deciding for all of humanity what the true meaning of everything is, and whats best for all. They have figured it all out. There surely isnt anything after we die, because they dont think so, therefore go ahead and risk the destruction of mankind because they want to live forever with their collective god controlling everything.

these super-rich super-heroes have decided to focus on whats really long term importance to the human race and intelligence, which in my view the 2 most important things (to the human race) right now are life-extension and AI. -Ben Goertzal, Ph.D.

Its the rational part of my mind that truly wants to believe in an afterlife, (underscores doubts in such) what does that mean for me I believe that technology will advance enough that some few lucky of us will never have to die. -Jay Fox

“People with greater means are going to have access to the best medical technology fastest”

“If you want it at all, you’re going to have to let the rich have their day in the ealry days if the technology … in the 1980’s mobile phones were thousands of dollars … it’s incredible how inexpensive cell phones are now, only 20 or 30 years later.” -Michael D. Hartel Ph.D.

They compare cell phone diffusion to reassure us that the lower class (since they’re systematically wiping out the middle class) might rapidly get access to all of the greater gene / nano therapies and other technologies like bionic organs required for indefinite lifespans. There isn’t going to be a “magic bullet” to immortality, instead it will be a combination of things which greatly increases the odds that most people wont be able to afford real extension for a long time. However, certain nanomachines for brain augmentation is another story.

They claim there’s enough global food capaicity to support 60 billion people, but there’s no way this earth will last forever if everyone becomes immortal. Imagine if the entire world was developed and industrialized already. Look at the rate it’s being destroyed now. Imagine more people, and then more, and so on. Even if we get around petroleum driven automobiles there will be even more challenges like water itself. Do you really think the worlds elite want us all around forever? This technology may redefine the motives of those in power in all new ways. This really makes me wonder about these people calling for massive global population reduction and genocide. Surely they know about these coming technologies if they’re scientists who really know what’s going on?

Weve treated the Human Genome Project as a priority since day one because we all want to live forever. We want to live forever, and were getting there. -Bill Clinton

An interesting twist to this issue is how Clinton was for immortality, but the President’s Council on Bioethics that oversee these issues seem to be verbally against the Immortality efforts. They typically speak against many of the extremism issues, but Im not convinced that theyre doing anything to stop the bigger research.

Why is Bush calling for nanotechnology and supercomputing spending? Hasn’t Moore’s Law remaining true for the past several decades been ample computer progress? Why aren’t they stopping DARPA’s “Biorevolution“, or their Strong AI & supercomputing that is so vital to their revolution? Why didn’t they limit spending on “Robust Intelligence” in the NSF’s Information and Intelligent Systems program? There’s even the NASA IA project.

Why was virtually every government agency, with the White House first on the list, involved in the NBIC workshop, which was the rally cry of the posthuman evolution revolution? Why was Charles H. Huettner there applauding the workshop on behalf of the White House? NBIC goes beyond mere nanotechnology ‘bots’, it’s about growing synthetic cybernetic organizisms from the molecular level, which is the ultimate key in their posthuman revolution.

Why have human embryos been cloned in the US under Bush? Why are mice being humanized with human stem cells? Bush may be shaking up the embryonic stem cell community, but all that’s doing is motivating them to find new and better sources.

It looks like Bush doesn’t mind “god building”, human-rat chimeras, cloning, rapid posthuman evolution or their technological “collective society” (Singularity) just as long as human embryotic stems cells from new sources aren’t being used (that’s really just the wedge issue they use to keep us simpletons ignorant about the bigger issues).

There is an entity thats going to take care of us after death, that entity is us. which is the collective consciousness and our will to build an omniscient omnipresent entity, which is our collective technology and our collective consciousness, and that entity is by definition god, so Id say that god will be there when we become god. -Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D.

Micro-Electrode Arrays “MEA’s”

These are what they use to turn live brain neurons into “living computational devices”:

Micro-Electrode Arrays

Over the last 30 years, non-invasive extracellular recording from multiple electrodes has developed into a widely-used standard method. Systems and methods have been greatly improved, leading to more features, lower costs, and higher throughput. Almost all excitable or electrogenic cells and tissues can be used for extracellular recording in vitro, for example central or peripheral neurons, heart cells, retina, or muscle cells.

MEA1060-Amplifiers

Multi Channel Systems provides high-performance amplifiers for various in vitro and in vivo applications. Gain and bandwidth settings can be specified by the user. MEA1060 amplifiers for in vitro recording from microelectrode arrays (MEAs)

Raw electrode data is amplified by the 60 channel pre and filter amplifier MEA1060. The small-sized amplifier fits perfectly on standard microscopes.

3-D Fakir Multi Electrode Array

The three-dimensional MEA (3D-MEA) is intended for use with acute slice preparations. In order to increase tight contact of the slice with the electrodes the chip can be treated with polyethylenimine like a standard culture dish. For cleaning purposes please be advised to use the following cleaning protocol. After cleaning store the 3D-MEA with the lid closed in a dry and dark environment.

MORE:
HERE

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‘Brain’ In A Dish Acts As Autopilot, Living Computer

University of Florida researcher Thomas DeMarse holds a glass dish on October 12, 2004, containing a “brain” — a living network of 25,000 rat brain cells connected to an array of 60 electrodes that can interact with a computer to fly a simulated F-22 fighter plane. During this interaction, scientists can observe how the neurons communicate as a network, and send and respond to signals from the computer and each other, in an effort to understand and model the computational power of the brain.
(University of Florida/Ray Carson)

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” — a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish — gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene. As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments.

“We’re interested in studying how brains compute,” said Thomas DeMarse, the UF professor of biomedical engineering who designed the study. “If you think about your brain, and learning and the memory process, I can ask you questions about when you were 5 years old and you can retrieve information. That’s a tremendous capacity for memory. In fact, you perform fairly simple tasks that you would think a computer would easily be able to accomplish, but in fact it can’t.”

While computers are very fast at processing some kinds of information, they can’t approach the flexibility of the human brain, DeMarse said. In particular, brains can easily make certain kinds of computations – such as recognizing an unfamiliar piece of furniture as a table or a lamp – that are very difficult to program into today’s computers.

“If we can extract the rules of how these neural networks are doing computations like pattern recognition, we can apply that to create novel computing systems,” he said.

DeMarse experimental “brain” interacts with an F-22 fighter jet flight simulator through a specially designed plate called a multi-electrode array and a common desktop computer.

“It’s essentially a dish with 60 electrodes arranged in a grid at the bottom,” DeMarse said. “Over that we put the living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to reconnect themselves, forming a living neural network – a brain.”

The brain and the simulator establish a two-way connection, similar to how neurons receive and interpret signals from each other to control our bodies. By observing how the nerve cells interact with the simulator, scientists can decode how a neural network establishes connections and begins to compute, DeMarse said.

When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. “You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out – and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,” he said. “(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.”

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.

“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”

Although the brain currently is able to control the pitch and roll of the simulated aircraft in weather conditions ranging from blue skies to stormy, hurricane-force winds, the underlying goal is a more fundamental understanding of how neurons interact as a network, DeMarse said.

“There’s a lot of data out there that will tell you that the computation that’s going on here isn’t based on just one neuron. The computational property is actually an emergent property of hundreds or thousands of neurons cooperating to produce the amazing processing power of the brain.”

With Jose Principe, a UF distinguished professor of electrical engineering and director of UF’s Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory, DeMarse has a $500,000 National Science Foundation grant to create a mathematical model that reproduces how the neurons compute.

These living neural networks are being used to pursue a variety of engineering and neurobiology research goals, said Steven Potter, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech/Emory Department of Biomedical Engineering who uses cultured brain cells to study learning and memory. DeMarse was a postdoctoral researcher in Potter’s laboratory at Georgia Tech before he arrived at UF.

“A lot of people have been interested in what changes in the brains of animals and people when they are learning things,” Potter said. “We’re interested in getting down into the network and cellular mechanisms, which is hard to do in living animals. And the engineering goal would be to get ideas from this system about how brains compute and process information.”

Though the “brain” can successfully control a flight simulation program, more elaborate applications are a long way off, DeMarse said. “We’re just starting out. But using this model will help us understand the crucial bit of information between inputs and the stuff that comes out,” he said. “And you can imagine the more you learn about that, the more you can harness the computation of these neurons into a wide range of applications.”

Pentagon plans cyber-insect army

By Gary Kitchener BBC News | Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 16:57 GMT DARPA source: http://www.darpa.mil/baa/baa06-22.html

The Pentagon’s defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.

The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later.

Experts told the BBC some ideas were feasible but others seemed “ludicrous”.

A similar scheme aimed at manipulating wasps failed when they flew off to feed and mate.

The new scheme is a brainwave of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which is tasked with maintaining the technological superiority of the US military.

It has asked for “innovative” bids on the insect project from interested parties.

‘Assembly-line’

Darpa believes scientists can take advantage of the evolution of insects, such as dragonflies and moths, in the pupa stage.

“Through each metamorphic stage, the insect body goes through a renewal process that can heal wounds and reposition internal organs around foreign objects,” its proposal document reads.

The foreign objects it suggests to be implanted are specific micro-systems – Mems – which, when the insect is fully developed, could allow it to be remotely controlled or sense certain chemicals, including those in explosives.

The invasive surgery could “enable assembly-line like fabrication of hybrid insect-Mems interfaces”, Darpa says.

A winning bidder would have to deliver “an insect within five metres of a specific target located 100 metres away”.

DARPA SCHEMES

-Arpanet information processing system – a precursor to the internet

-Self Healing Minefield – the mines reconfigure themselves to fill gaps when one or more are stepped on

-Brain Interface Programme to wire soldiers directly into their machines

-Mechanical Elephant to penetrate dense Vietnam War jungle. Unused

-Policy Analysis Market – online futures market where “traders” wager on future terrorism and assassinations

-Computer game, Tactical Iraqi, to teach troops how to decipher Iraqi body language

The “insect-cyborg” must also “be able to transmit data from relevant sensors, yielding information about the local environment. These sensors can include gas sensors, microphones, video, etc.”

‘Fiction’

Scientists who spoke to the BBC news website were unconvinced.

Entomology expert Dr George McGavin of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History said the idea appeared “ludicrous”.

“Not all wacky ideas are without value. Some do produce the goods. My feeling is this will probably not produce the goods,” he said.

ANIMALS IN WARFARE WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will “wrangle” itself on to enemy ship’s deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air WWII: Attach incendiaries to bats. Induce hibernation and drop them from planes. They wake up, fly into factories etc and blow up. Failed to wake from hibernation and fell to death Vietnam War: Dolphins trained to tear off diving gear of Vietcong divers and drag them to interrogation. Later, syringes placed on dolphin flippers to inject carbon dioxide into divers, who explode. About 40 divers thought to have been killed

“What adult insects want to do is basically reproduce and lay eggs. You would have to rewire the entire brain patterns.”

Dr McGavin said it appeared impossible to connect the technology to the right places during the metamorphic phase, particularly with regard to flight.

Prof Andrew Parker, research leader at the Natural History Museum’s zoology department and a specialist in bio-mimetics, said the concept was not too far fetched but had its limits.

Technology could help direct an insect to chemicals such as in roadside bombs, he said, but controlling full flight was “a long way off”.

Entomology expert at the museum, Stuart Hine, agreed it was plausible to use insects to detect explosives.

But he added: “I feel that the reality of such cyborg fusion between insect and machine lies squarely in the realms of fiction.”

To receive micro-signals from the insects would require a dish “quite close and several feet in diameter, rendering it a less than covert operation”.

Darpa’s previous experiments to get bees and wasps to detect the smell of explosives foundered when their “instinctive behaviours for feeding and mating… prevented them from performing reliably”, it said.

Darpa was founded in 1958 to keep US military technology ahead of Cold War rivals.

Its website says it has around 240 personnel and a $2bn (1.1bn) budget. Supporters say much of its work has been successful, but it has also drawn criticism for unusable “blue-sky” projects.

A former director said in 1975: “When we fail, we fail big.”

Stem cells grown from dead bodies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1308732.stm

Stem cells may one day provide new treatments

By BBC News Online’s Helen Briggs American scientists have grown brain cells harvested from dead bodies. They say cadavers are a potential source of stem cells, the master cells that have the ability to develop into all the body’s different tissues. Doctors believe it might one day be possible to use stem cells to repair brain damage caused by strokes or Parkinson’s disease. But the research has been overshadowed by ethical objections about the source of the tissue, as well as legal bans to such work in some countries. Master cells Stem cells are the body’s master cells, having the ability to “differentiate” into a wide variety of cells used for different purposes in the body.

Researchers have been growing rodent brain cells in the lab for many years

Experiments in rodents have shown that stem cells from embryos or adults could potentially treat a range of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s. However, the source of stem cells for human medical research has raised ethical concerns. Many researchers believe cells taken from embryos are the best candidates for developing new medical treatments. However, the work is banned in some countries because of ethical objections. Recent work has shown that adult stem cells could provide a viable alternative. Now, a US team has shown that dead bodies can also be used as a source of stem cells. ‘Careful evaluation’ Writing in the scientific journal Nature, a team led by Fred Gage at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, report a technique for sourcing stem cells from human post mortem samples and surgical specimens. When placed in a succession of solutions in the lab, the tissue of two patients – an 11-week-old baby boy and a 27-year-old man – yielded immature (progenitor) brain cells.

Careful evaluation and consideration of the relative merits of post-mortem or adult-derived cells and foetal progenitor cells will be necessary

Fred Gage, Salk Institute

Since then, the team has successfully used the technique on other samples taken from people from different age groups, even from tissue extracted nearly two days after death. But the scientists warn that the work raises “complex ethical and societal issues” which must be carefully addressed. “Careful evaluation and consideration of the relative merits of post-mortem or adult-derived cells and foetal progenitor cells will be necessary,” they write. Ethical issues Professor Peter Andrews of the University of Sheffield, UK, leads a research team that works on stem cells. “There do appear to be true stem cells in the brain that do under certain circumstances renew themselves,” he told BBC News Online. “In theory, if you had a source of such immature brain cells you might be able to treat something like Parkinson’s disease.”

It’s very important that we have a full public discussion about progress in this important field

Professor Brian Heap, Royal Society

He said the use of cadavers as a potential source of stem cells raised a different set of ethical issues from those associated with using stem cells from embryos. Britain’s Royal Society recently suggested in a report that one day people could donate their stem cells in much the same way that they are currently asked to offer their organs for transplant. But the vice president of the Royal Society, Professor Brian Heap, said a raft of questions still needed to be answered before such issues could be addressed. He told BBC News Online: “It’s very important that we have a full public discussion about progress in this important field.”

Reanimation

Doctors claim suspended animation success

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January 20, 2006

London: Researchers are testing potentially life-saving techniques for keeping humans in a state of suspended animation while surgeons repair their wounds.

US doctors have developed a method of inducing hypothermia to shut down the body’s functions for up to three hours.

In tests, they reduced the body temperature of injured pigs from 37C to 10C before operating on them and then reviving them.

Now they are applying for permission to test the procedure on casualty patients without a pulse who have lost large amounts of blood, New Scientist magazine reported.

It is thought this method and others could one day be used on car crash and gunshot victims, as well as in the battlefield to treat wounded soldiers.

A surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Hasan Alam, has tested the technique about 200 times on pigs, with a 90 per cent success rate.

First he anaesthetises the animal, then cuts a major vein and artery in its abdomen to simulate multiple gunshots to a person’s chest and abdomen.
As the pig rapidly loses about half its blood and enters a state of shock, Dr Alam drains its blood and stores it before pumping chilled organ preservation fluid into its system.

The animal’s body temperature falls to about 10C until it is in a state of “profound hypothermia” and has no pulse and no electrical activity in its brain.

But after the blood stored earlier is warmed and pumped back into the pig’s body its heart starts beating again and it comes back to life.

“It is still pretty awe-inspiring,” Dr Alam said. “Once the heart starts beating and the blood starts pumping, voila, you’ve got another animal that’s come back from the other side.

“Technically, I think we can do it in humans.”

He now wants automatic consent to use the technique on all patients brought to his hospital who have lost blood and would probably die with only standard care.

Other US researchers are working on methods to place organisms in suspended animation by exposing them to a cocktail of gases, including hydrogen sulphide.

Press Association

How it could work

Physicians would allow a patient to bleed to death within minutes while recapturing the patients blood and replacing it with a cold saline solution, putting the body into a state of suspended animation.

Normal body temperature, 37C Hypothermic body temperature, 10C

Brain death occurs in 4-5 minutes Brain can survive for 90-120 minutes

At critically low oxygen levels the cellular respiratory chain produces excessive amounts of toxic freeoxygen radicals, killing its own cells.

Hypothermic body temperature, 10c

The saline solution flushes oxygencarrying blood from body tissue, shutting
down the cellular respiratory chain.

For every 10c drop in body temperature, the metabolic rate falls by 50 per cent.

Ethnic Bio-War

Biotech advances hold terrifying possibilities
Once-unimaginable weapons move closer to reality

Mon, Dec. 12, 2005

“The so-called ethnic bullet — biological menaces tailored to kill only members of a certain clan or race. Disease-inducing weapons whose effects might be easily reversed — but with an antidote only the weapon maker would possess. A village or city could be faced with the prospect of submission and health or resistance and death. Genetic damage caused by remotely fired ultraviolet, radio or electromagnetic waves.

Substances that can make people hopelessly clumsy, painfully forgetful or pitifully docile.

“(iii) Genetic targeting
Two concerns arise from the possible development of genetically targeted weapons: those that may be used to target the genetic characteristics of different ethnic groups; and those that may be used to target crops and animals.

(a) Human Genome Project and the ethnic bomb
The Human Genome Project (HGP) is an international collaboration, centred in the United States and sponsored by the National Human Genome Research Institute. Its goal is to sequence and identify all the genes on the human genome. The work is nearly complete and has been extended to discover the functions of these genes.

The work of the HGP is important given concern over the possible development of weapons targeted at the specific genetic characteristics of different ethnic groups. It has been argued that “if investigations provide sufficient data on ethnic genetic differences between population groups, it may be possible to use such data to target suitable micro-organisms to attack known receptor sites for which differences exist at cell membrane level or even to target DNA sequences inside cells by viral vectors.”[26] These kinds of novel bio-weapons, developed from the application of genomics and proteomics, would only affect individuals with the particular target protein or structure against which they were designed. In many cases the target would be nearly universal within the human species. However, in other cases there might be alternative structures, and only individuals with a particular form of the structure would be vulnerable to the toxic effects of the new weapon. This possibility has led to speculation about ‘ethnic weapons’ that would affect one ethnic or racial group while leaving others untouched.

Thankfully, among humans the amount of intra-group genetic variation is generally greater than the inter-group variation, making it highly unlikely that such weapons would affect only one ethnic group or ‘race’. Indeed, many analysts share the view of the Royal Society: “…these developments are some years away and in some cases are likely to be more fictional than real”.[27] However, it appears that research into such an ethnic weapon has already been attempted (see box 1 on Project Coast).”
http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Research/2001diseasebydesign1.htm

“Another ghastly application of genetic engineering to biological warfare, first proposed in 1970 in the American military journal Military Review,, involves the exploitation of subtle hereditary differences between ethnic populations. A pathogen would be modified so it would be most likely to infect people of a particular ethnic background, leaving those of other ethnicities relatively unharmed. The ultimate in racial discrimination, these tactic has the potential to virtually eliminate certain ethnic groups while leaving others untouched.”

http://library.thinkquest.org/17109/weapons.htm

“Israel is working on an “ethnically targeted” biological weapon that would kill or harm Arabs but not Jews, according to Israeli military and western intelligence sources cited in a front-page report in the London Sunday Times, November 15, 1998 (”Israel Planning ‘Ethnic’ Bomb as Saddam Caves In,” by Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin).

In developing this “ethno-bomb,” the British paper went on, Israeli scientists are trying to exploit medical advances by identifying distinctive genes carried by some Arabs, and then create a genetically modified bacterium or virus. The goal is to use the ability of viruses and certain bacteria to alter the DNA inside the host’s living cells. The scientists are trying to engineer deadly microorganisms that attack only those bearing the distinctive genes.”
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n6p24_Weber.html

“Scientists say they may be able to clone selective toxins to eliminate
specific racial or ethnic groups whose genotypic makeup predisposes them
to certain disease patterns. Genetic engineering can also be used to
destroy specific strains or species of agricultural plants or domestic
animals.”

http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/germwarfare100101.cfm

“There is emerging international concern about the possibilities of ethnic warfare using targeted biological weapons,” says Moreno, director of U.Va.’s Center for Biomedical Ethics. “It is already known that the old apartheid government in South Africa was conducting research for the possible development of biological agents that could be used against the black population. They were particularly interested in seeking ways to sterilize women of color. There have also been allegations that Israel has shown an interest in these kinds of targeted bioweapons. The international community will need to strongly address such threats in the near future.”

http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2001/06/moreno.html

Rat Nerve Cell Pings Computer Chip

By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060417/nervechip_tec.html

April 19, 2006 A rat nerve cell attached to a semiconductor chip has exchanged a signal with the chip, an achievement that could lead to organic computers that process information like a brain, say researchers.

Picture: Courtesy of Peter Fromherz |

Rat Nerve on Chip

This image shows the rat neuron on a transistor. Scientists registered communication between the chip and the neuron, bringing thinking computers and brain-controlled artificial limbs closer to reality.

Seashells hold key to building a better battery

Building on studies of seashells by the seashore, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have harnessed genetically engineered viruses to build nanoscale components that could lead to a new generation of powerful batteries that are as small as grains of rice and that spontaneously assemble themselves in laboratory dishes.

Read More:  Seattle Times

Also: Virus-Enabled Synthesis and Assembly of Nanowires for Lithium Ion Battery Electrodes

Science published 6 April 2006, 10.1126/science.1122716 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1122716v1

Enzyme computer could live inside you

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/dn8767.html
18:09 23 February 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Will Knight

A molecular computer that uses enzymes to perform calculations has been built by researchers in Israel.

Itamar Willner, who constructed the molecular calculator with colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, believes enzyme-powered computers could eventually be implanted into the human body and used to, for example, tailor the release of drugs to a specific person’s metabolism.

The team built their computer using two enzymes – glucose dehydrogenase (GDH) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) – to trigger two interconnected chemical reactions. Two chemical components – hydrogen peroxide and glucose – were used to represent input values (A and B). The presence of each chemical corresponded to a binary 1, while the absence represented a binary 0. The chemical result of the enzyme-powered reaction was determined optically.

The enzyme computer was used to perform two fundamental logic computations known as AND (where A and B must both equal one) and XOR (where A and B must have different values). The addition of two further enzymes – glucose oxidase and catalase – connected the two logical operations, making it possible to add together binary digits using the logic functions.

Intelligent drug delivery

Enzymes are already widely used to assist calculations using specially encoded DNA. These DNA computers have the potential to surpass the speed and power of existing silicon computers because they can perform many calculations in parallel and pack a vast number of components into a tiny space.

But Willner says his enzyme computer is not designed for speed it can take several minutes to perform a calculation. Rather, he envisages it eventually being incorporated into bio-sensing equipment and used, for example, to monitor and react to a patient’s response to particular dosages of a drug.

“This is basically a computer that could be integrated with the human body,” Willner told New Scientist. “We feel you could implant an enzyme computer into the body and use it to calculate an entire metabolic pathway.”

Martyn Amos from University of Exeter, UK, also sees great potential for such devices. “The development of fundamental devices such as counters is vital for the future success of bio-molecular computers,” he told New Scientist.

“If such counters could be engineered inside living cells, then we can imagine them playing a role in applications such as intelligent drug delivery, where a therapeutic agent is generated at the site of a problem,” Amos says. “Counters would also offer a biological ’safety valve’, to prevent engineered cells proliferating in an uncontrolled fashion.”

Your body used to transmit signals

Chips that really get under your skin
By Tom Krazit
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: February 8, 2006, 6:15 PM PST

SAN FRANCISCO–Without the white headphones, how will anyone know you’re listening to an iPod?

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) weren’t concerned with such weighty questions when they developed a chip that allows you to listen to an iPod using your forearm as the transmission wire for the audio signals. The chip was detailed in one of several presentations during a session called “Silicon in Biology” at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) here Thursday.

Low power consumption was a common design thread throughout the several different chips presented by university researchers. The need to reduce power consumption of chips has become a mantra for the PC and server processor industry, but low power consumption takes on a new meaning when referring to chips that will be used inside the human body or on skin.

KAIST has built a prototype chip it thinks solves some of the problems encountered in setting up personal-area networks that take advantage of the body’s ability to conduct electricity. Computer scientists have long envisioned connecting the numerous personal electronic devices the average technology fan carries around each day, but wiring those devices together is impractical, and Bluetooth connections are prone to interference, said Seong-Jun Song, a professor at KAIST.

Other groups have explored ways of using the body itself as the networking cable, but early chips consumed too much power or used data rates that were too slow for effective communication, Song said. KAIST’s chip uses wideband signaling to reduce power consumption while boosting data rate. The chip sends low-power impulses across a wide swath of frequencies, rather than sending a high-power signal down a narrow frequency.

KAIST researchers modified an iPod nano and an earphone with its test chips for demonstration purposes. A user would need to keep a finger constantly pressed to a conductor on the iPod, which would send the audio signal through the arm to the earphone. The chips can produce data rates of up to 2 megabits per second while consuming less than 10 microwatts, Song said.

These chips are not something that will be included in one of Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynotes anytime soon. The papers presented at ISSCC are generally research projects that are several steps away from becoming products.

Another paper presented during the session outlined a chip designed to monitor brain activity by sending its data wirelessly to monitors. The University of Utah has been working on chips that monitor neural impulses in quadriplegics in hopes of finding a way to build prosthetic limbs powered by brain waves. However, early testers of those chips had to have the chips implanted in their brains connected to external computers by wires, which is obviously uncomfortable.

Wireless transmitters for this type of brain measurement also had to be very sensitive to power consumption levels to avoid destroying brain tissue, said Reid Harrison, a professor at the university. Researchers believe they have come up with a low-power wireless chip by reducing the size of the data captured by the chip, and allowing doctors to selectively choose what neural activity to monitor and when, he said.

DNA-wrapped carbon nanotubes serve as sensors in living cells

NBIC Success Story:

DNA-wrapped carbon nanotubes serve as sensors in living cells
James E. Kloeppel, Physical Sciences Editor
217-244-1073; kloeppel@uiuc.edu
1/26/06

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Single walled carbon nanotubes wrapped with DNA can be placed inside living cells and detect trace amounts of harmful contaminants using near infrared light, report researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Their discovery opens the door to new types of optical sensors and biomarkers that exploit the unique properties of nanoparticles in living systems.

“This is the first nanotube-based sensor that can detect analytes at the subcellular level,” said Michael Strano, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois and corresponding author of a paper to appear in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal Science. “We also show for the first time that a subtle rearrangement of an adsorbed biomolecule can be directly detected by a carbon nanotube.”

At the heart of the new detection system is the transition of DNA secondary structure from the native, right-handed “B” form to the alternate, left-handed “Z” form.

“We found that the thermodynamics that drive the switching back and forth between these two forms of DNA structure would modulate the electronic structure and optical emission of the carbon nanotube,” said Strano, who is also a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and at the university’s Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory.

To make their sensors, the researchers begin by wrapping a piece of double-stranded DNA around the surface of a single-walled carbon nanotube, in much the same fashion as a telephone cord wraps around a pencil. The DNA starts out wrapping around the nanotube with a certain shape that is defined by the negative charges along its backbone.

When the DNA is exposed to ions of certain atoms – such as calcium, mercury and sodium – the negative charges become neutralized and the DNA changes shape in a similar manner to its natural shape-shift from the B form to Z form. This reduces the surface area covered by the DNA, perturbing the electronic structure and shifting the nanotube’s natural, near infrared fluorescence to a lower energy.

“The change in emission energy indicates how many ions bind to the DNA,” said graduate student Daniel Heller, lead author of the Science paper. “Removing the ions will return the emission energy to its initial value and flip the DNA back to the starting form, making the process reversible and reusable.”

The researchers demonstrated the viability of their measurement technique by detecting low concentrations of mercury ions in whole blood, opaque solutions, and living mammalian cells and tissues – examples where optical sensing is usually poor or ineffective. Because the signal is in the near infrared, a property unique to only a handful of materials, it is not obscured by the natural fluorescence of polymers and living tissues.

“The nanotube surface acts as the sensor by detecting the shape change of the DNA as it responds to the presence of target ions,” Heller said.

Co-authors of the paper with Strano and Heller are graduate student Esther Jeng and undergraduate students Tsun-Kwan Yeung, Brittany Martinez, Anthonie Moll and Joseph Gastala. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Optical Detection of DNA Conformational Polymorphism on Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes
Science 27 January 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5760, pp. 508 – 511
DOI: 10.1126/science.1120792

Daniel A. Heller,¹ Esther S. Jeng,² Tsun-Kwan Yeung,² Brittany M. Martinez,² Anthonie E. Moll,² Joseph B. Gastala,² Michael S. Strano^2*

The transition of DNA secondary structure from an
analogous B to Z conformation modulates the dielectric environment of the single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) around which it is adsorbed. The SWNT band-gap fluorescence undergoes a red shift when an encapsulating 30-nucleotide oligomer is exposed to counter ions that screen the charged backbone. The transition is thermodynamically identical for DNA on and off the nanotube, except that the propagation length of the former is shorter by five-sixths. The magnitude of the energy shift is described by using an effective medium model and the DNA geometry on the nanotube sidewall. We demonstrate the detection of the B-Z change in whole blood, tissue, and from within living mammalian cells.

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
² Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Synthetic Biology: Genetic Engineering on Steroids

One of the top developments of 2005 is a kind of genetic engineering on steroids — a new field called “synthetic biology” in which scientists are setting out to create new forms of life that have never existed before.

Transhumanist / Mad Scientist Craig Venter (Short)

In “genetic engineering,” natural genes from one species are inserted by force into a different species, hoping to transfer the properties or characteristics of one species into another. Trout can live in cold water, so maybe a trout gene blasted into a tomato will help tomatoes withstand cold weather. The limitation on this system is the characteristics that nature has built into the genes of species.

Now scientists have overcome that limitation. They are learning to develop entirely new species, new forms of life. Awareness of this new scientific specialty — called “synthetic biology” — began to appear in the press in 2005.

The construction of living things from raw chemicals was first demonstrated in 2002 when scientists created a polio virus from scratch. They found the polio virus genome on the internet, and within 2 years had created a virus from raw chemicals. The synthetic virus could reproduce and, when injected into mice, paralyzed them just as a natural polio virus would do. They said they chose the polio virus to demonstrate what a bioterrorist could accomplish.

“It is a little sobering to see that folks in the chemistry laboratory can basically create a virus from scratch,” James LeDuc of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said at the time.

A year later, in 2003 Craig Venter and colleagues at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Md., took only 3 weeks to create a virus from scratch.

Later that same year the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) published a short paper called “The Darker Bioweapons Future,” reporting the conclusions of a panel of life science experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences. The CIA paper said, in part, “The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse than any disease known to man.” And the CIA said, “The same science that may cure some of our worst diseases could be used to create the world’s most frightening weapons.” The CIA offered one example: “For example, one panelist cited the possibility of a stealth virus attack that could cripple a large portion of people in their forties with severe arthritis, concealing its hostile origin and leaving a country with massive health and economic problems.”

Transhumanist / Mad Scientist Craig Venter (TED Talk)

Nature magazine — England’s most prestigious science journal — said in 2004 that synthetic biology “carries potential dangers that could eclipse the concerns already raised about genetic engineering and nanotechnology.”

Last month, the British journal New Scientist said in an editorial, “Let us hope that tomorrow’s terrorists don’t include people with PhDs in molecular genetics.” The editorial went on to explain why the technology cannot regulated: “The underlying technology has already proliferated worldwide, and some gene-synthesis companies that are ostensibly based in the west are thought to manufacture their DNA in China and other countries in the far east where skilled labour is cheap.”

The editorial was written in response to an investigation conducted by the editors of New Scientist. They wondered if they could special- order DNA over the internet and have it shipped to them by mail (which the Brits call “post,” not mail). Their report is titled, “The bioweapon is in the post,” and they concluded that it would be doable, and that commerce in such things would be difficult — or impossible — to control. “But with gene synthesis firms springing up all over the world, and the underlying technology becoming cheaper and more widely available, it is unclear whether regulations enacted in any one country will be enough.”

“It’s going to be virtually impossible to control,” predicts David Magnus of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.

The New Scientist editorial ends by saying, “If there ever was a case for scientists around the world to engage in sensible self-regulation before a nightmare becomes reality, this is it.”

Unfortunately, scientists are ill-equipped by their training to grapple with the ethical and moral dimensions of their work. Scientists have no equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath — “First do no harm” — that guides the behavior of physicians. The Hippocratic oath counsels restraint, humility, and caution. In science, on the other hand, wherever your curiosity takes you is the right place to go, even if it takes you into “a darker bioweapons future.”

Small wonder that so many people have lost faith in science, scientific progress, and the promise of America. As the editors of Nature said in 2004, “Controversies over genetically engineered crops and embryo research are leading people to question how carefully scientists consider the possible consequences of their work before barreling ahead. This is no small concern for science, as it has already led to restrictions.”

But of course it isn’t just scientists who are responsible for speeding the deployment of ill-considered technologies onto the world market. The underlying engine for all this reckless behavior is an economic system that requires economic growth year after year.

Our society has grown dependent upon economic growth for achieving “liberty and justice for all.” You say your slice of the pie is unacceptably small and you’re having to sleep under a bridge? Don’t worry — economic growth will make the whole pie larger, so your tiny slice will grow too. Thus domestic tranquility, justice, fairness, and fulfilling the promise of America are all dependent upon economic growth. We don’t have any other widely-approved way to distribute the benefits of the economy, except through economic growth. We have forgotten the alternative, which is sharing.

But decade after decade since World War II, economic growth rates have been stagnant or declining, not just in the U.S. but throughout the “developed” world.

Slow growth derives from at least two sources — productive capacity exceeds consumer demand and we have a glut of capital, so it is getting harder to find good investments.

These two features of the modern economy force investors to constantly search for “the next big thing” — in hopes of returning to historical rates of return on investment. As a consequence, corporations (which have limited liability, by law) engage in reckless behavior — including behavior that may threaten the well being of everyone. They create new biotech crops and deploy them across the nation’s agricultural landscape before thorough tests have been completed. They put nano particles into baby lotion before they have any idea whether the nano particles can penetrate a baby’s skin, and before they have asked where those nano particle will go after they are thrown out with the bath water.

So now we have synthetic biology — the “next big thing” — genetic engineering on steroids — the manufacture of living organisms unlike any that have appeared on earth before. Investors are lining up to support new firms that are willing to sell the building blocks of new forms of life to anyone who can come up with a few hundred thousand dollars. This may in fact produce the next big thing, but it may not be quite the thing investors are hoping for.

Until we devise a steady-state economy that does not require perpetual growth, investors will keep us on this awful “next big thing” merry- go-round, our quality of life continually threatened anew by the ill- considered products and unanticipated by-products of feral science.

See also:

http://syntheticbiology.org/

http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/

[PDF] SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

[PDF] Synthetic Biology Applying Engineering to Biology

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