Dr Venter told BBC News: "We've now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell - a different organism. "As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code." The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA. "This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell," said Dr Venter. 'New industrial revolution' Dr Venter and his colleagues hope eventually to design and build new bacteria that will perform useful functions. "I think they're going to potentially create a new industrial revolution," he said.

'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists and the ethics concern over synthetic cells controlled by their DNA and the possibility future development of synthetic chromosomes and synthetic bacteria.

Will new organisms released into the ecosystem pose new grave dangers that are impossible to predict, and thus creating dilemmas that are impossible to solve?


Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA.

The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.

Some also suggest that the potential benefits of the technology have been over-stated.

But the researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.

The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

Craig Venter defends the synthetic living cell he and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another.

Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a "synthetic cell", although only its genome is truly synthetic.

The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used "synthesis machines" to chemically construct a copy.

The scientists "decoded" the chromosome of an existing bacterial cell - using a computer to read each of the letters of genetic code.

Dr Venter told BBC News: "We've now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell - a different organism.

"As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code."

The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA.

"This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell," said Dr Venter.

'New industrial revolution'
Dr Venter and his colleagues hope eventually to design and build new bacteria that will perform useful functions.

"I think they're going to potentially create a new industrial revolution," he said.

"If we can really get cells to do the production that we want, they could help wean us off oil and reverse some of the damage to the environment by capturing carbon dioxide."

Even some scientists worry we lack the means to weigh up the risks such novel organisms might represent, once set loose”

Dr Venter and his colleagues are already collaborating with pharmaceutical and fuel companies to design and develop chromosomes for bacteria that would produce useful fuels and new vaccines.

But critics say that the potential benefits of synthetic organisms have been overstated.

Dr Helen Wallace from Genewatch UK, an organisation that monitors developments in genetic technologies, told BBC News that synthetic bacteria could be dangerous.

"If you release new organisms into the environment, you can do more harm than good," she said.

"By releasing them into areas of pollution, [with the aim of cleaning it up], you're actually releasing a new kind of pollution.

"We don't know how these organisms will behave in the environment."

The risks are unparalleled, we need safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse ”

"He isn't God," she said, "he's actually being very human; trying to get money invested in his technology and avoid regulation that would restrict its use."

But Dr Venter said that he was "driving the discussions" about the regulations governing this relatively new scientific field and about the ethical implications of the work.

He said: "In 2003, when we made the first synthetic virus, it underwent an extensive ethical review that went all the way up to the level of the White House.

"And there have been extensive reviews including from the National Academy of Sciences, which has done a comprehensive report on this new field.

"We think these are important issues and we urge continued discussion that we want to take part in."

Ethical discussions
Dr Gos Micklem, a geneticist from the University of Cambridge, said that the advance was "undoubtedly a landmark" study.

But, he said, "there is already a wealth of simple, cheap, powerful and mature techniques for genetically engineering a range of organisms. Therefore, for the time being, this approach is unlikely to supplant existing methods for genetic engineering".

The ethical discussions surrounding the creation of synthetic or artificial life are set to continue.

Professor Julian Savulescu, from the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, said the potential of this science was "in the far future, but real and significant".

"But the risks are also unparalleled," he continued. "We need new standards of safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse and abuse.

"These could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm."

The advance did not pose a danger in the form of bio-terrorism, Dr Venter said.

"That was reviewed extensively in the US in a report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Washington defence think tank, indicating that there were very small new dangers from this.

"Most people are in agreement that there is a slight increase in the potential for harm. But there's an exponential increase in the potential benefit to society," he told BBC's Newsnight.

"The flu vaccine you'll get next year could be developed by these processes," he added.

Information about the Illuminati click here

The men of evil responsible for human sterilization, racial sociological science, master race planners, artificial human fertilization, animal and human cloning, modifications of the frequencies of human genes, state laws of mandatory vasectumy and castration operations targeting the mentally ill, mentally defective, mentally retarded, and the "feeble minded", racially driven genetic counseling in the 1970's, and the human genome project extending to the present day.

     "The facts," Professor Thorndike wrote, "are easily, simply and
completely explained by one simple hypothesis; namely, that the nature
of the germ-cells--the conditions of conception--cause whatever
similarities and differences exist in the original natures of men, that
these conditions influence mind and body equally, and that in life the
differences in modification of mind and body produced by such
differences as obtain between the environments of present-day New York City public school children are slight."
     "The inferences," he says, "with respect to the enormous importance of original nature in determining the behavior and achievements of any man in comparison with his fellows of the same period of civilization and
conditions of life are obvious.
     All theories of human life must accept as a first principle the fact that human beings at birth differ
enormously in mental capacities and that these differences are largely
due to similar differences in their ancestry. All attempts to change
human nature must accept as their most important condition the limits
set by original nature to each individual."
     Meantime other investigators, principally followers of Karl Pearson in England, were working out correlation coefficients in other lines of research for hundreds of different traits.
     It was found, no matter what physical or mental trait was
measured, that the coefficient of correlation between parent and child
was a little less than .5 and that the coefficient between brother and
brother, or sister and sister, or brother and sister, was a little more
than .5. On the average of many cases the mean "nature" value, the
coefficient of direct heredity, was placed at .51. This gave another
means of measuring nurture, for it was also possible to measure the
relation between any trait in the child and some factor in the environment. A specific instance will make this clearer.
     Groups of school children usually show an appalling percentage of
short-sightedness. Now suppose it is suggested that this is because they are allowed to learn to read at too early an age. One can find out the age at which any given child did learn to read, and work out the
coefficient of correlation between this age and the child's amount of
myopia.
     If the relation between them is very close--say .7 or .8--it
will be evident that the earlier a child learns to read, the more
short-sighted he is as he grows older. This will not prove a relation of
cause and effect, but it will at least create a great suspicion. If on
the contrary the correlation is very slight, it will be evident that
early reading has little to do with the prevalance of defective vision
among school children.
     If investigators similarly work out all the other correlations that can be suggested, finding whether there is any regular relation between myopia and overcrowding, long hours of study, general economic conditions at home, general physical or moral
conditions of parents, the time the child spends out of doors, etc., and
if no important relation is found between these various factors and
myopia, it will be evident that no factor of the environment which one
can think of as likely to cause the trouble really accounts for the poor
eyesight of school children.

The devil worshiping men who practiced the science of Eugenics seemed to have their own plans for the weak, but God is and was always watching...

     Every living creature was at some stage of its life nothing more than a
single cell. It is generally known that human beings result from the
union of an egg-cell and a sperm-cell, but it is not so universally
understood that these germ-cells are part of a continuous stream of
germ-plasm which has been in existence ever since the appearance of life on the globe, and which is destined to continue in existence as long as life remains on the globe.
     The corollaries of this fact are of great importance. Some of them will
be considered in this chapter.
     Early investigators tended naturally to look on the germ-cells as a product of the body. Being supposedly products of the body, it was natural to think that they would in some measure reproduce the character of the body which created them; and Darwin elaborated an ingenious hypothesis to explain how the various characters could be represented in the germ-cell. The idea held by him, in common with most other thinkers of his period, is still held more or less unconsciously by those who have not given particular attention to the subject. Generation is conceived as a direct chain: the body produces the germ cell which produces another body which in turn produces another germ-cell, and so on.
     But a generation ago this idea fell under suspicion. August Weismann,
professor of zooelogy in the University of Freiburg, Germany, made himself the champion of the new idea, about 1885, and developed it so effectively that it is now a part of the creed of nearly every biologist.
     Weismann caused a general abandonment of the idea that the germ-cell ism produced by the body in each generation, and popularized the conception of the germ-cell as a product of a stream of undifferentiated germ-plasm, not only continuous but (potentially at least) immortal.
     The body does not produce the germ-cells, he pointed out; instead, the germ-cells produce the body.  The basis of this theory can best be understood by a brief consideration of the reproduction of very simple organisms.  "Death is the end of life," is the belief of many other persons than the Lotus Eaters. It is commonly supposed that everything which lives must eventually die. But study of a one-celled animal, an Infusorian, for example, reveals that when it reaches a certain age it pinches in two, and each half becomes an Infusorian in all appearance identical with the original cell. Has the parent cell then died? It may rather be said to survive, in two parts. Each of these daughter cells will in turn go
through the same process of reproduction by simple fission, and the process will be continued in their descendants. The Infusorian can be
called potentially immortal, because of this method of reproduction.
     The immortality, as Weismann pointed out, is not of the kind attributedm by the Greeks to their gods, who could not die because no wound could destroy them. On the contrary, the Infusorian is extremely fragile, and is dying by millions at every instant; but if circumstances are favorable, it can live on; it is not inevitably doomed to die sooner
or later, as is Man. "It dies from accident often, from old age never."