Artificial Life: The Biggest Danger We May Ever Face

In the photo to the right are Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith. You’ve never heard of them? Well, they might soon be as famous as J. Robert Oppenheimer. What did they do? They created artificial life. And that may bring with it some amazing benefits to human kind. . . or it may kill us all. Indeed, what they have done presents us with a danger unlike any danger we have ever faced before, and that’s not hyperbole.

In 1995, American biologists Venter and Hamilton became the first people to unravel the DNA sequence of a living organism (a bacterium). This was a major achievement that brought with it both the possibility of good and bad. For example, this advance promised to one day end genetic disease. It promised new drugs, the ability to make us all stronger, smarter, healthier, and to give us longer lives. That’s all good. But it also brought with it the possibility that parents would set out to create designer babies, with unknown consequences. Also, many worried that this could create a two-tiered society in which the haves have all of the best genetic traits money can buy and the poor don’t. Some feared this could even lead to two completely different human species. Yet, even assuming the worst, such concerns could be controlled through careful legislation that restricted the use of that technology for good purposes.

The new danger, however, will be well beyond such controls and it’s far more dangerous.

On May 20, 2010, Venter and Hamilton became the first human beings to create an artificial life form. They did this by creating a strand of synthetic DNA with 100 genes on it. Then they placed that DNA onto an existing dead cell. Through the introduction of various chemicals, the DNA strand took over the cell. Then it duplicated itself, and life was born. . . life without ancestors.

So what’s the problem? Here’s the problem. What they did is actually quite simple once you know how to do it. Unlike the creation of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, this process does not require extensive hardware or massive amounts of technical know-how which only a handful of governments possess. Indeed, it is being suggested that this process is so simple that, someday soon, creating new life will be as easy as choosing genes “off the shelf” and most anyone will be able to learn to do this.

What this means is that millions of people all over the world will be able to create whatever they can dream up. Thus, controlling the use of this technology will be impossible. Indeed, forget the analogy to controlling nuclear, biological or chemical weapons -- which involves monitoring a few governments and controlling the export of certain technology and hardware. A more appropriate analogy will be trying to stop computer viruses, which can be created by anyone in the world with access to a computer and a little knowledge of computer code.

And the word "virus" is key. When people think of “life,” they typically think of animals. But animals aren’t really the problem. If some biologist in Russia creates a half-pig, half-dog, that’s not the end of the world. But what if that same biologist creates a virus that looks like the flu, passes just as easily, and acts like Ebola? What if an Al Qaeda scientist changes mad cow disease to let it skip across species to humans?

That’s the real danger, not that people will create brand new super-bugs from scratch, but that they will modify existing ones to make them more fatal, to make them harder to detect, or to make them spread quicker or easier.

There is no limit to the depths of evil that we could achieve with this technology. And given that human nature rarely stops trying to plumb those depths, it is not hard to see viruses suddenly appearing that cause blindness, deafness, infertility or death. It is not hard to see new species of plants created that wipe out whole eco-systems, or bees with poison in their stingers, or ultra-violent versions of existing animals. All of this will be possible.

So what do we do? Sadly, this is where I have few answers. The Economist recommends that we turn this knowledge loose to everyone. Their thinking is that it is best to have millions of good guys all working on solutions whenever something evil appears, like we do with computer viruses. But that analogy doesn’t work in this instance because the ability to counteract these things quickly may not be enough, and the danger of letting this knowledge out is so great. For example, if I designed a killer virus that spread like wildfire, but waited 60 days to show any symptoms, by the time people started dropping dead, it would be too late to find a solution. . . hundreds of millions of people would have it.

But what are the alternatives? Government control? From the sound of it, it will be impossible to keep this genie in the bottle. As with nuclear weapons, now that everyone knows it can be done, it will only be a matter of time before others figure it out. Thus, even if we put a stop to it right now, that may only delay the inevitable and it will leave us without the research needed to counteract the new things that suddenly appear.

Criminal punishments? Those only stop people who don’t have criminal intent in the first place. No angry 16 year old wiz kid in the Philippines is going to care about a prison sentence in the US. Neither will an Al Qaeda scientist.

Monitoring? How? We can’t monitor the creation of computer viruses now.

Ultimately, there may not be an answer. But I would suggest a combination of things and I would suggest we start immediately. First, I would suggest some sort of export control to try to limit the spread of the technology, and I would suggest registering the necessary chemicals. I would also suggest establishing procedures for genetic testing when people arrive at hospitals with strange diseases and establishing some form of improved communications or database through the CDC to track unusual symptoms. Finally, in all honesty, I recommend that anyone caught creating such a virus be dealt with brutally, and that the punishment for such a crime be death. That is the one penalty that might dissuade most people from playing around with these things.

Normally, I favor all scientific advances. But this one could be the exception. This one appears to be a true Pandora’s Box, and we need to tread very carefully on this.