Hmmm... very interesting, i spent years in collage studying ecology in collage, and must say that indeed, we may someday be able to manufacture a species of bacteria because they are so simple that can do things for us like clean up the environment and perhapse cure disease and a whole host of other things, indeed, the possibilties are seemingly endless.
The problem is introduction, nature may not be able to balance out the man made bacterias existence, so eather this backeria wont be able to survive without human help, or may kill off species and become out of control. I sure how scientists, before they start really producing this stuff, if they intend to release it into the wild that they have a contol mechanism that can kill off these bactiera or cell with alien DNA in it if it gets out of its self contained environment.
Introduced species are very dangerous, and backeria can be almost impoissible to control the spread of unless we can onyl keep them in a contained environment (perhapse like an atmospheric processing facility) so that they dont become introduced into the environment and yet can perform their function.
I am all for it, but we need to be very careful, nature may not be able to deal with this introduction, leading to disaterous consiquences. Hell, even nautral species that are introduced into a new environment are often disasterous, let alone one made by man. This is percisly the reason why even when when launch probes into other planets we do so in an steril environment, where the probe is being made, so that for instance when we sent a probe to jupiter, if something is alive on that probe from earth it is theoritcally possible to cross contaminate that planet.
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DX'ed with HFA as a child. However this was in 1987 and I am certain had I been DX'ed a few years later I would have been DX'ed with AS instead.
06 Oct 2007, 2:03 pm
