No doubt the degree makes all the difference

Jean-Michel Besnier, whose the last book, "tomorrow, the posthumains", published last year, was interested in the artificialization of human biotechnologies and the cognitive sciences, has suspended its activities in teaching at the Sorbonne to lead the Department science and society at the Ministry of higher education and research.

Bacteria obtained by Craig Venter raises new ethical or philosophical problems

Insofar as it could have obtained the same bacteria by genetic engineering, it is not in itself new problem. However, the mode of obtaining further strengthens its artificiality. With genetic engineering, it is to add or delete a few genes. Here is the entire genome that is manufactured, even if it is a copy of a genome existing in nature. And it is this artificial character who strikes imaginations.

Is the artificialization of nature a good thing

Any human technological activity tends to make the more artificial nature. The domestication of animals in the Neolithic was a first major inflection printed in nature. There is that to consider for example all breeds of dogs that we have created for us help in hunting, in the custody of the herds or as pets today. The man is modern because it completes, or even surpasses, imperfect found in nature. Some are screaming to the transgression, if they sacralisent nature, even though a Catholic tradition could attest that God in bestowed the usufruct to the man, thus justifying the freedom of its interventions. This is the lesson that it takes for example by the Jesuit Francisco Suarez who has read in this sense, in the 17th century, the fathers of the Church.

Intervene in nature is one thing. Create life is another...

No doubt the degree makes all the difference. If one considers that the bacterium manufactured by Craig Venter is only a first step towards the creation of an entirely new full living organism, it actually convenes the fantasies of the demiurge and the sorcerer's apprentice to denounce the sheer scale of the company. But at the same time, is the randomness of nature not itself frightening for the man And the biology of synthesis which is a matter of engineers does not violate natural indeterminacy. She wants to create a perfectly controllable living, and of much more controllable it will widely differ from what already exists in nature.

Is synthetic biology, for all free from risk

Of course, not. First because that, as no matter what technology, malicious individuals may retrieve, for example for purposes of bioterrorism. The possibility to access the instructions for use of the techniques of molecular biology on the Internet and the trivialization of the manufacture of DNA sequences in effect make the credible threat. Then, what the proponents of the biology of synthesis, it is unclear what the consequences for man and the environment of the accidental release of one of these artificial bacteria. In any case, if it is not that people focus exclusively on the risks associated with this new approach, should open the debate very upstream instead of giving people the impression that the science is impose the irreversible.