Comment by justsaysmthng | Hacker News Reader

Comment by justsaysmthng | Hacker News Reader

> "You could be a student in high school and go onto the Web-based server and type out the program you want, and it spits back the DNA sequence."

Woah, hold your horses right there.

One of the first things I did when I learned to program in high school was to write a virus.

So I'd think twice before making a "Web-based server" which spits out DNA and letting everyone use it.

It's not just about high schoolers or terrorists.

"The only way to solve the issues that the world is facing is for the population to drop by 60%".

These were the words of a successful tech entrepreneur, who's lived in a dozen countries, fairly young, open minded and intelligent who I had dinner with a couple of days ago.

And I see his point - the overpopulation issue is real - but I'm scared that this idea is taking roots in our minds, even in the minds of people who should know better.

This was spoken in the context of a discussion about war, but why do war, when one person can design an organism that wipes out 60% of humans ?

Our consciousness is not evolved enough to handle the ability of designing random organisms and viruses.

I've voiced this opinion before, but the community seemed to not agree with it much. But I'm still standing by it - be very careful with this tech.

In fact, I think this shouldn't be allowed to get out of the lab. Not yet.

Design tool like Cello produces a string of characters representing the sequence of a DNA molecule, not a physical molecule of DNA. To actually do something with this in the real world, you would need to place an order with a DNA Synthesis company (assuming you don't own a DNA synthesizer yourself). Fortunately, these companies screen sequences for things like genes encoding toxins, and work with law enforcement agencies. See for example Marcus Graf's talk at SB6.0: http://sb6.biobricks.org/session/day-2/assessing-risk-managi...

Also, the capabilities of this tool are rather limited. It is not clear to me how being able to design a small combinatorial logic circuit would directly help a potential bioterrorist.

I'd guess this type of screening only works because we're currently very bad at programming cells. Checking whether a DNA sequence is malicious can't be simpler than checking that a computer program is malicious. And we all know how well that works.

It's arguably easier to check for malicious DNA than malicious computer programs. The motifs for pathogens are pretty common. It's also highly unlikely that someone will create something totally novel, and the experiments required to test malicious properties of a bioagent would be somewhat detectable.

> It is not clear to me how being able to design a small combinatorial logic circuit would directly help a potential bioterrorist.

By advancing this technology.

I assume (hope) we're not yet capable of spitting out DNA out of a USB synthesizer. But given the speed with which technology evolves, it wouldn't be too wild to speculate that 10 or 20 years from now this might become possible.

"I assume (hope) we're not yet capable of spitting out DNA out of a USB synthesizer."

Nope. They're off-the-shelf devices. There's even a used market: http://www.labx.com/dna-synthesizers

It would be really hard to synthesize something of any significant size using these instruments.

Not only the capabilities of this tool are limited - so is our understanding of many of the fundamental concepts that might give us control over the biofactories that are living cells e.g. think protein folding.

Given the state of the software industry, your fear of any TDH gaining the ability to create literal bugs by typing in a program is indeed well founded.

> In fact, I think this shouldn't be allowed to get out of the lab. Not yet.

I'd rather have a million bio-hackers who can design an organism that attacks your hypothetical organism than only a few scientists working in a lab who get orders from a not necessarily well-meaning, humanitarian government.

And I don't want to live in a society where a small group of people can decide which scientific knowledge is allowed to spread and which is not.

The atomic bomb is the sort of scientific knowledge that many regret to have created - including the people who were in charge of their creation - Oppenheimer in the US and Sakharov in the USSR both spent their lives fighting for nuclear non-proliferation, after having seen the bomb in action.

A much wiser approach would have been to not create these weapons in the first place, but that's a long and complicated discussion.

Now we have books like "Unmaking the Bomb", which are interesting to read but are impossible to implement, because scientists are no longer in control of this knowledge.

And this is the point I was trying to make (probably in vain, I know), that it is wiser to not open some boxes, than to squeeze the monsters that come out of them back inside.

The box, once found, will be opened. It's only a matter of time.

No, I got your point.

But if we want to limit the dissemination of potentially harmful knowledge we'd have to stop teaching basic physics, chemistry and biology. The fact that we do not have daily TATP explosions or Anthrax attacks or that there is a strong movement for nuclear non-proliferation shows us that we are not too bad in handling the responsibility that comes with knowledge.

And not all about the early nuclear research was bad - without it, we'd not be where we are in space exploration or medicine.

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