Horizon - Playing God.

[peter]

If you Google the words of the thread title, with a bit of luck you will come up with the BBC i-player site to view the above program. The BBC's Horizon series is a serious and well respected science documentary program (in their last episode they were given virtualy complete acess to the CERN facility to report on the state of play in respect of the Higg's boson) not given to fantasy or scare-mongering presentation.

The above program deals with the rapidly emerging 'new-science' of Synthetic Biology. A branch of bio-engineering that investigates the 'creation' of new materials etc using (I think) recombinant DNA techniques, the program shows the state of play in the feild at present, and also looks at the wide availability and ease with which these tecniques can be carried out.

Though the program did not focus on the dangers inherent in technologies of potentially great power/danger being freely available over the internet for lay people to 'play with' for recreation (at one point we were taken to a community center in USA where so called 'Bio-hackers' had created flourescent E coli bacteria over a weekend for fun), the presenter was clearly unsettled by this aparent lack of regulation - as indeed was I.

This was I think one of the most frightening serious science programs I have seen in a long time and I would be grateful if one or two of you could spend the time viewing it and come back to me with your thoughts.