I have long been a fan of Dr Craig Venter, the American biologist and entrepreneur, most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome. Craig Venter’s biography sits on my desk as an inspiration. Craig Venter has been pursuing the dream of creating artificial life, and last week he succeeded in doing just that when his team created the first cell with a synthetic genome! To me, that’s a huge milestone and an achievement that needs to be commended (Which I have on my blog).

Predictably, there have been many calls for caution and that of Dr Venter playing God and there have been calls for standards.

Professor Julian Savulescu, from the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, said the potential of this science was “in the far future, but real and significant”.

“But the risks are also unparalleled,” he continued. “We need new standards of safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse and abuse.

“These could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm.”

While I understand the need for caution and standards especially in the military domain, the potential of this discovery to transform humanity is profound and we need to balance innovation and standards.

This may not be a view shared by many and I welcome thoughts and comments.