Seeker Blog

There he goes again, says a group of scientists and activists alarmed by the latest rebel moves of J. Craig Venter.

I think that Duncan and ETC may be getting a bit more breathless than the facts merit. As best I can tell Venter is investing his own money towards the laudable goal of harnessing synthetic biology. See the end of Duncan’s post for some perspective.

Since butting heads with the scientific establishment during the sequencing of the human genome–and coming out rich and famous in the process–Venter has had the moxie and smarts to know just when it’s time to blend science with commerce.

This time he’s trying to cash in with a patent for artificial life–specifically, a designer microbe that Venter and his pals at the Venter Institute have been trying to assemble from scratch. In 1999, Venter and Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith used a simple bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium to roughly figure out the minimal number of genes it would take for an organism to live. Since then they have been trying to synthesize this “minimal genome” inside a cell that could be augmented by additional genes to do things like produce hydrogen or gobble up carbon dioxide.

Three years ago, when I last visited Venter’s institute, located in Rockville, Maryland, he told me he and his colleagues were making great progress on finishing this artificial bug. But so far there has been no announcement of success. “This is not easy to do, to build a living organism from scratch,” he said at the time.

Whatever success or failure the team has had, Venter the businessman quietly filed an application last October that seeks to own the critter his lab wants to create. The U.S. Patent Office published the application (#20070122826) on May 31.

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June 18, 2007: Addendum to Readers

After publishing this blog, a spokesperson for the Venter Institute e-mailed me to say that Craig Venter speaks often about the societal implications of synthetic biology. In 1998, the Institute of Genomic Research, founded by Venter, issued an ethical report on the topic authored by a team led by bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, the policy group at the Venter Institute, along with MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, were given a grant from the Sloan Foundation to review societal issues and laboratory practices surrounding synthetic genomics. (Check out the press release issued in 2005.) Their final report from this review will be issued in July. The Venter Institute spokesperson said that the ETC was invited to attend meetings and present comments, but apparently it did neither.

Venter seems determined to forge ahead with his work and with his patent–which is his prerogative as a scientist. It is also the prerogative of critics to continue to challenge Venter and others as they push science to the edge of what society may or may not tolerate at the moment. In between is the great mass of society that will undoubtedly pay scant attention to either side, although the outcome of this discussion may have far-reaching implications–if Venter is able to create a truly synthetic organism.

I plan to closely follow this issue and read the Sloan-funded report next month. Let’s pick up this discussion again then.

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