I’m really struggling to keep up, writes Phil Hill.
Science was never my strongest subject at school.
There have been some massive advances since I somehow managed to scrape through biology, physics, and chemistry exams.
Computers, mobile phones, satellite TV, drone deliveries, and driverless cars are but a few that impact our everyday lives or are about to.
Then there’s artificial intelligence, which doom-mongers tell us could lead to the extinction of the human race - (as if we weren’t already doing our best to wipe ourselves out by warming up the planet).
Now we hear that the Wellcome Trust has started work on a project to create the building blocks of human life.
The aim is not only to read a molecule of DNA, but to create part of it.
The gene really will be out of the bottle.
Scientists involved in the initiative say it will lead to therapies that will improve people’s lives as they age by generating disease-resistant cells and repairing damaged organs.
On the other hand, it is argued that unethical researchers could use the advances to do harm and for warfare purposes.
There are also concerns that eventually unscrupulous scientists would potentially be able to create ‘designer babies’ and ‘synthetic humans’.
Of course, there have been huge benefits thanks to advances in science, which have exponentially sped up over recent decades, but most of us get more than a little twitchy at the idea of scientists playing God.
Our world is already vastly different to the one our grandparents inhabited.
What’s it going to be like in 50 years’ time?
Methuselah would have seen little or no change during his 969 years, which ended more than a millennium before Jesus was a twinkle in Mary’s eyes.
But the rate of discovery and change we live through today throws up some puzzling issues.
What could be next?
Science boffins have for years been looking into cryopreservation—that’s the freezing of a dead person’s body in the hope they could be brought back to life at some stage in the future.
Imagine how confused that person would be to return to the living in a few hundred years.
And what would be the next step?
Would science look to find the formula for eternal life?
Who knows.
