Creating Headlines, Artificial Life, Ethical Concerns, and Ontological Perplexity

Synthetic biology has been catapulted into the public sphere after an article in Science reported that Craig Venter and his collaborators had managed to make a synthetic cell by inserting a fabricated genome into a bacterium. The achievement made headlines and was widely presented as a case of creating artificial life. Already there has been debate about what impact it may be expected to have on future biotechnological research and about what ethical concerns arise in relation to synthetic biology. Unsurprisingly a third issue has been whether the scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute have really created artificial life. With regard to the latter question, the debate has not focused on whether the synthetic cell is really alive, but whether it is properly artificial. Practical Ethics