[DIYbio] Re: DIYBIO in the news..."Amateurs Are New Fear in Creating Mutant Virus"

A broader discussion that I think the article should have focused on is not whether DIY Biologists could make a deadly flu today or in the near future but whether Biologists of all types (amateur to professional) in general are coming to terms and taking a full account of the potential power they will have in shaping this world.  It is somewhat of a subtle point I want to get across and forgive for choosing examples that are rife with baggage, but as someone with a physics background and not a bio background I can think of two examples to make my point.   TNT and the Atomic Bomb.  In both cases scientists came up with discoveries that have both well known positive and negative effects.  Many lives were saved.  Many lives were lost.  What interests me is how the pioneers of these technologies dealt with their discoveries.  Nobel, who invented TNT realizes that negative power he brought on this earth and starts the Nobel Prize to acknowledge and reward positive scientific progress.  Einstein, a key person for atomic energy leading to the bomb, at first urges the US to make the bomb and once it is unleashed on the world spends the rest of his life actively working to free the world from Nukes.  The technology was produced and after great negative incidents each man spent time and effort to attempt to rid the world of the negative aspects.

We have not had the equivalent of TNT nor the Atomic Bomb with respect to synbio or other emerging biotech...should we start a discussion now or wait till it happens?

What I am getting at and what I want to know is:

1.  Are biologists aware of the great power they / may have in the near future?  Are the pioneers of the new field of synbio really taking stock of what great power they hold?  

2.  If biologists are aware of the potential power who is making a point of saying "yes I know we will have great power.  Some my use this power negatively, but here is why progress needs to continue and most importantly here is how we can overcome the negative aspects?

I really want to know where this discussion is happening.  Please point me to these scientists, leaders, etc... or maybe my understanding of biology is all wrong and large scale disasters are not possible...

I think the article in the NYTimes is a continued back of forth of scientists debating the possibility of a particular person with a particular skill set doing something wrong, but what we really we should be seeing is a discussion and acknowledgement that 1) in the future biologists will wield an incredible amount of power (good and bad) and 2) how are these pioneers responding to that responsibility in the new world they are shaping? 

-Chris

On Tuesday, March 6, 2012 6:40:03 AM UTC-5, Richard Proctor wrote:

#fearmongering

On Mar 5, 11:00 pm, Chris Templeman <christemple...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting article from the standpoint of the completely disparate points
> of view.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/health/amateur-biologists-are-new-f...
>
> The range from whether it is possible to create H1N1 is pretty broad...
>
> compare for instance:
> "If you are a farmer somewhere in China, you could do it," said Dr.
> Mueller, the virologist at Stony Brook.
>
> versus
>
> The synthesis companies are on the lookout for matches between requested
> DNA and the genomes of dangerous pathogens. But some experts say such
> safeguards are hardly airtight. "You could imagine a determined actor could
> cleverly disguise orders," Dr. Casadevall said. "I have a lot of respect
> for human ingenuity."
>
> Do you need gene synthesis to make the next "killer flu" or just a few
> barnyard animals?
>
> -Chris