BEHIND the hype and hoopla about creating artificial life forms and the ethical concerns it raises lies a more fundamental question. Why do it at all?
Craig Venter and his colleagues say that their artificial microbe, or others like it, could one day be engineered to produce hydrogen for fuel, break down carbon dioxide to reduce global warming, or help clean up toxic dumps. But experts told Â鶹´«Ã½ that such efforts would be misguided, and possibly even wasted.
Take biological methods for producing hydrogen. It would probably be more practical to fine-tune microbes that are already fairly good at…
