Why Designing Life Needn't Be Monstrous

As you no doubt are aware, the act of playing God carries with it some ethical quandaries. How do we create and experiment on new organisms while maintaining our ethics? In this post, I seek to allay your fears that I'm some horrible mad scientist corrupting the youth with his hair brained schemes and show I'm really just a lovable, environmentalist engineer.

Ethical Development of New Life

One thing no sane scientist wants is a failed experiment screaming at the horror of its own existence. That's the stuff of nightmares. Please, feel free to shudder right now at the thought of it. So how do we create life and make sure this doesn't happen? Simple: we cut out the brain. We design creatures that do not develop brains. Realize that these organisms for most of our purposes do not need to think. Yes, neurons are needed for sending signals to muscles and glands and receiving signals from sensory organs, but organized collections of neurons for even rudimentary thoughts are not needed. It's quite clear that brains are complicated things and getting them to behave in ways we want is very perplexing and ethically questionable problem. Thus, it's much easier to use computers for all the processing these organisms will be required to do. Computers are something we very well understand and are getting better and better at making and programming them to do exactly what we want. They do exactly what we program to do and nothing more. This means the  majority of our GELFs (Genetically Engineered Lifeforms) are actually cyborgs: part-life, part-machine.

Without brains or highly advanced computer programming, nobody can (easily) claim our GELFs are conscious beings that deserve liberty and justice. Thus all the failed experiments are nothing worse than sacks of flesh embedded with microchips instead of crimes against humanity.

Will this GELF be a slave any more than your toaster is?

Slavery is terrible, and that's an understatement. So why shouldn't we consider it terrible to own GELFs and make them work for us? Well, because they have no brains and therefore no emotions, they will never feel put upon when we force them to work for us hours on end. It's no different than operating the robot arms at a Honda facility or turning on a toaster every morning to cook breakfast. Your toaster isn't howling in pain as its insides reach scorching temperatures, so why would we make GELFs any different?

Disposing of Broken Life

Do we need to hold a funeral whenever a lab rat dies? How about when we break a laptop? Disposing of broken GELFs need not be anymore of an emotional experience than getting a car towed to the dump. That is not to say we shouldn't do what we can to keep GELFs alive and useful for as long as we can, just as we should keep our smartphones breaking. 

In fact, keeping GELFs from breaking ought to be relatively easy. Unlike your cell phone, organisms can heal themselves. This is clearly an advantage we will want to optimize in our creations.

Is it Unholy?

This really isn't an ethical question. It's religious bullshit that has no bearing on the progress of this Science. I'll leave it at that.

What might we be missing out on through removing brains from our designs?

Eliminating brains in our designs from the outset begs the question: what if we could accomplish more (increase efficiency, usefulness, et cetera) with synthetic brains than we will ever be able to with just computer-controlled cyborgs? I leave such issues for others to grapple with because I don't feel the inhuman, possibly conscious creations that we would need to subject to existence in the early stages (or all stages?) of such research will be worth the possible gains or that we need to build any organic creatures that might be more intelligent than us and we certainly do not need to make any that are purposely less intelligent to point of being funny. Science can be done without sacrificing one's morals; it's the only kind I intend to do.

Conclusion

This whole article boils down to this: with laws and regulations put into place that keeps brains of experimental creatures out of the picture, there should be little (rational) reason for public outcries when this technology comes to the forefront. 

P.S. While we're at it, why not remove all vocal organs from our designs as well? Just to be absolutely safe from the nightmare screams. It's not like we can't use electronic speakers instead.

Hey, guys and girls! Let's have some fun with DNA.

This blog is dedicated to something I have a passion for: imagining lifeforms that would helpful to us, society, and the environment. You might be able tell I want to keep an upbeat attitude about this because let's face it: it's HIGHLY unlikely that the technology to manipulate DNA will advance within my lifetime to the skill, safety, precision, and reliability levels that would be required to make real all the imaginary lifeforms we come up with today, no matter how much work I put into this blog. But if we start with the assumption that good ideas have value, then all that doesn't matter. If we assume that if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day manipulate life with the expertise of a deity, then the ideas for these lifeforms could be utilized (assuming also this information can be passed on to those godlike-engineers). And man, will those people be happy they don't need to start from a blank slate as to what to do with their fantastic technology!

So, will this work in the end make me the money I feel it deserves? I don't know, but I can certainly hope so, and I feel the first step towards that goal will be to make myself and my ideas known to the masses. And that is why I'm making this blog. Thus begins our fun with DNA.