Biomedical Engineering Reference
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timates based on past major extinctions show that nature's restoration of
the lost biodiversity will require about 10 million years. Presuming that
humankind survives the sixth extinction, it will be faced with major eco-
logical voids within this century. it is doubtful that humans will patiently
wait 10 million years for nature to fill these voids via the evolutionary pro-
cess. What, if any, role synthetic biology ought to play in species replace-
ment after the sixth extinction is a question that needs careful thought, the
sooner the better.
homo sapiens:
moving from cocreator to creator.
evolution by natural se-
lection and perhaps other mechanisms was the first and primary creator
of living things on earth over the past four billion years. humankind has
been a cocreator of life forms, along with biological evolution, ever since it
began domesticating plants and animals more than ten thousand years ago.
our cocreative activities continue into the present with selective hybrid-
ization and breeding, induced mutagenesis, and genetic engineering tech-
nologies. But if synthetic biology is successful in generating new organisms
from scratch with human-designed genomes, we will have advanced from
cocreators to independent creators of life.
Do the human habits of commodifying nature, exempting humans from
certain laws of nature, allowing trained incapacities in biology within our
education systems, and the ongoing sixth extinction oblige us to work on
a special ethic to guide the aims and results of synthetic biology? As pre-
viously noted, this is a controversial question, and reasonable persons will
disagree on the answer. in my view, prudent vigilance, as urged by the
Presidential Commission for the study of Bioethical issues (2010) for syn-
thetic biology, is not a sufficient response to synthetic biology. What ques-
tions should an ethic for synthetic biology explore? All or a subset of the
following five questions could be a starting place.
1. Are there qualitative differences between synthetic biology and genetic
engineering?
2. should a moral boundary be drawn between “natural” and “synthetic”
life forms regarding their ethical treatment, such as legislating their
protection via a threatened/endangered species act?
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