
Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life - Hooke
https://www.chemheritage.org/distillations/magazine/man-made-a-history-of-synthetic-life
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carapace
A four-billion-year old, incredibly intricate, non-linear (replicator!)
system, the only one in the known Universe, that we all depend on utterly, and
that we are only beginning to understand, should not be tinkered with willy-
nilly.

This is a very scientific viewpoint. I'm not superstitious nor am I ignorant.

Research should proceed apace, but deploying GMOs into the world should be the
tool of last resort, used only when we are desperate and can't do anything
else. Synthetic biology is Pandora's Box, not a toy chest. We should have a
moratorium on GMOs (outside the research lab) for at least several centuries.
It will take us at least that long to get anything like the necessary
knowledge to do so responsibly.

The folks that want to proceed with GMOs and synthetic biology (outside of the
research lab) have no real basis for their insistence on safety. It's a kind
of _faith_. Usually not stated, these folks have _faith_ that their GMOs are
safe, and further that _most_ GMOs in the future will be safe and any that
aren't will be dealt with...

"It's fine. It will be fine."

That's what disturbs me most about the arguments against a cautious approach
to GMO deployment, that it's fundamentally a faith-based position but they are
shrouded in scientific-ist trappings.

