So with all the civil war, oil spills and financial crises happening on Planet Earth these days, it is especially unnerving to be reading about researchers creating a completely new organism with a man-made synthetic cell.
The man behind it all defends up the discovery with this:"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."
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.
Awesome. Probably what we need to do with brand new, man-made bacteria is put it in the hands of oil & gas companies and drug companies. Totally logical, as they are constantly proving that they're equipped to handle this kind of thing - BP and Halliburton especially - give it to them first. Perhaps they can give it to some CEOs on Wall Street, some Tea Partiers, the EU, Arizona, Homeland Security, Facebook, defense contractors, and politicians all over the world as well and see what they can do with it. Maybe Texas and their police can spray everyone with it while they spy on its citizens with their unmanned drones. Asshats. I think one of the detractors got it right:
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."