Didn't want to gum up Alex Goddard's feed with commentary on this:...
Didn't want to gum up Alex Goddard's feed with commentary on this: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/science/synthetic-human-genome.html?_r=0
I don't know if it was really "secret", or not, but the first thought I had when I read "... attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting." was that somebody wanted to protect their IP.
As far as breeding soldiers or reproducing Einstein, we are a long way away from that, baby. Still worth noting the ethics, though.
It's entirely possible the intent of the meeting was misconstrued.
"He said the meeting was closed to the news media, and people were asked not to tweet because the project organizers, in an attempt to be transparent, had submitted a paper to a scientific journal. They were therefore not supposed to discuss the idea publicly before publication." Ok, so that's a real thing, the not presenting before publication thing, although it's a little convoluted because if it were super strict no one could present anything at a meeting if they ever hoped to publish. However, publishing an article is not an attempt to be transparent, whatever your motives. That's not why people publish.
It matters a lot more, however, when it comes to IP whether or not it's been discussed or presented, how much, who knew, public art, blah blah blah.
I can't precisely articulate why asking companies and foundations for money makes me prick my ears. I mean, duh, research is funded by socially rigid, politely mannered begging. It also shouldn't automatically alarm me that a stereotypical tech money person is involved. And yet. Statements like "countless new biotech applications" could be entirely innocent and altruistic. Only that's rarely what is actually seen in the real world.
Somebody else involved "... is leading an international consortium that is synthesizing the genome of yeast, ... The scientists are making changes, such as deleting stretches of DNA that do not have any function, in an attempt to make a more streamlined and stable genome." Ok, it's yeast. But if that were human, we are constantly finding out that what we called junk DNA, and yes, that's the terminology that was used, is not junk. It does stuff. Shock, surprise. I mean, again, that's not automatically bad, but we get so cocky about what we think we know.
So there's probably some potential good stuff, like curing diseases, obs, that could come from something like this, but there's a lot of not good stuff, too. Worth considering, anyway.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/science/synthetic-human-genome.html?_r=0
I don't know if it was really "secret", or not, but the first thought I had when I read "... attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting." was that somebody wanted to protect their IP.
As far as breeding soldiers or reproducing Einstein, we are a long way away from that, baby. Still worth noting the ethics, though.
It's entirely possible the intent of the meeting was misconstrued.
"He said the meeting was closed to the news media, and people were asked not to tweet because the project organizers, in an attempt to be transparent, had submitted a paper to a scientific journal. They were therefore not supposed to discuss the idea publicly before publication." Ok, so that's a real thing, the not presenting before publication thing, although it's a little convoluted because if it were super strict no one could present anything at a meeting if they ever hoped to publish. However, publishing an article is not an attempt to be transparent, whatever your motives. That's not why people publish.
It matters a lot more, however, when it comes to IP whether or not it's been discussed or presented, how much, who knew, public art, blah blah blah.
I can't precisely articulate why asking companies and foundations for money makes me prick my ears. I mean, duh, research is funded by socially rigid, politely mannered begging. It also shouldn't automatically alarm me that a stereotypical tech money person is involved. And yet. Statements like "countless new biotech applications" could be entirely innocent and altruistic. Only that's rarely what is actually seen in the real world.
Somebody else involved "... is leading an international consortium that is synthesizing the genome of yeast, ... The scientists are making changes, such as deleting stretches of DNA that do not have any function, in an attempt to make a more streamlined and stable genome." Ok, it's yeast. But if that were human, we are constantly finding out that what we called junk DNA, and yes, that's the terminology that was used, is not junk. It does stuff. Shock, surprise. I mean, again, that's not automatically bad, but we get so cocky about what we think we know.
So there's probably some potential good stuff, like curing diseases, obs, that could come from something like this, but there's a lot of not good stuff, too. Worth considering, anyway.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/science/synthetic-human-genome.html?_r=0
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