From Sam Edge
Ricard Solé proposes harnessing synthetic biology to fix our planet (1 October, p 36). He discusses the “Jurassic Park effect” in which such engineering goes awry and concludes that it can be dismissed because we can “give bacteria a suicide switch” or because they can be engineered not to survive outside a given ecosystem.
This claim smacks of hubris. We can design “firewalls” to try to avoid unintended consequences but, as with all engineering, we are talking about probability not certainty. Even non-biological systems can behave in ways not predicted by their designers. Biological ones involving open-ended self-replication will inevitably mutate and evolve.
Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
