
Image courtesy of url to this bbc web site
Well I suppose it answers one question "where did the 2012 Olympic Mascots leave their other eye"
Regular readers of my articles might recall I'm something of a scientist - or at least I used to be - and I have on my CV several years where I brought home a pay packet obtained through employment wearing a white coat and running a lab that would have been the envy of Boris Karloff Christopher Lee Jeremy Brett and Bobby Boris Picket and the Crypt Kicker Five put together.
And i make no excuses for the fact that some of the things me and my fellow scientists came up with mean that quite a few people have been given the opportunity to kick the shadowy figure carrying the agricultural implement into touch for a little while longer.
But I'm not entirely sure I signed up for this.
Scientists in the US have succeeded in creating the first wholly synthetic living cell although to be fair they have not, as I thought from what I heard in the media today, done the work entirely from scratch. No, what they have done, in brief terms for the layman, is the equivalent of putting an existing life form in a photocopier.
GA and I have enough experience of large scale man made projects to know where this is heading.
Armageddon.
I mean the Bruce Willis Film, with a theme I consider the role model for "The Project I Want To Forget" if ever there was one.
Look, how can I put this. The country that gave us GM Soya whether we wanted it or not by deliberately contaminating the world export of the stuff with a few tractorloads of mutant material is in the business of manufacturing life forms by copying ALL the raw materials one nut and bolt at a time. Some people may think that a wizard wheeze. I on the other hand will remind you of the stupidity of allowing this as the millions of corpses pile up in the streets because of some small issue with a decimal point.
Sometimes, I wish I'd been a lumberjack, or a Tank Driver. One carefully placed shell round at the height of the cold war and the whole research institute behind this "development" would never have had its key staff. Oh well, such is life - and lingering death.