Regardless of what others might say, it has been noted that the scientists from all walks of life are privately discussing the possibility of building a synthetic human genome. The questions that are presently rising are as follows: Does the world need the technology? Can the society benefit if the plan comes into fruition?
Over 130 scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs and government officials from five continents gathered at Harvard this week for an "exploratory" meeting to discuss the topic of creating genomes from scratch including, but not limited to, those of humans, said George Church, Harvard geneticist and co-organizer of the meeting, according to a post from STAT.
Since it has been affirmed that the meeting was closed to the press, uncertainties and reservation are forecast to arise on the horizon. Also, the closed door meeting sparked ire from the prominent academics, particularly since it has been speculated that the synthesizing genomes involves building them from the ground up, chemically combining molecules to create DNA, reports the same post.
Additional report from The New York Times indicated of how the project is still in the idea phase and involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, and organizers revealed that the project could have a big scientific payoff.
It stands to reason that the proposed technological milestone would not just be reading the DNA genome, but the plan is to create and write the human genome. On a different note, such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues and notions of could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people, notes the same post.
As the scientists discussed the building and writing of the synthetic human genome from scratch, some were thrilled but ethical issues have also risen and questions of world needing the technological advancement the synthetic human genome are escalating. Nevertheless, it remains uncertain on how the world would accept the advancement once all stakeholders are on the right track.
