http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081001/sc_livescience/americanscluelessaboutplanstocreatenewlifeforms;_ylt=AnrAVw5KIV0a_wp_L.BlvXgbr7sF

Americans Clueless About Plans to Create New Life

Forms

Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor,

LiveScience.com

If you've never heard of the exciting field of synthetic

biology, you're not alone, but you might want to get wise

to the field's controversial promise to create life from

scratch.

About two-thirds of U.S. residents are clueless as well,

having never heard of the synthetic biology. Only 2

percent in a new telephone survey of 1,003 adults said

they have heard a lot about the work, which crosses

biology with technology and promises to create forms of

life that Nature never thought of.

Synthetic biologists engineer and build or redesign living

organisms, such as bacteria, to carry out specific

functions. The field is a scientific playground for the

genetic code, where previously nonexistent DNA is

formulated in test tubes.

By taking genetic engineering to the extreme, synthetic

biologists aim to make life in the lab.

The promise is that the novel organisms will fight disease,

create alternative fuels or build living computers. Already,

researchers have transplanted genetic material from one

microbe species into the cellular body of another,

described last year as the living "equivalent to converting

a Macintosh computer to a PC by inserting a new piece of

software."

"We face daunting problems of climate change, energy,

health, and water resources," a group of 17 leading

scientists in the field stated last year. "Synthetic biology

offers solutions to these issues: microorganisms that

convert plant matter to fuels or that synthesize new drugs

or target and destroy rogue cells in the body."

Now you know.

But why should you care?

For one, the field "is potentially controversial because it

raises issues of ownership, misuse, unintended

consequences and accidental release," according to a

report earlier this year commissioned by the

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

in England. In a nutshell, some fear microscopic lab freaks might escape and wreak havoc.

That in mind, scientists are concerned that the United

States is falling behind other countries in many areas of

science and technology and that the current

administration has been downright hostile toward some

fields of science. Obtaining federal funding for cutting-

edge research can be challenging when the public doesn't

even know what the research is about or what its benefits

might be.

And as the new poll showed, we tend to fear what we

don't know.

Respondents were asked how they viewed the potential

risks and rewards of the new technology. "Those more

familiar with synthetic biology are more inclined to have a

positive assessment of the tradeoff," the pollsters found.

"Early in the administration of the next president,

scientists are expected to take the next major step toward

the creation of synthetic forms of life," said David Rejeski,

director of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

"Yet the results from the first U.S. telephone poll about

synthetic biology show that most adults have heard just a

little or nothing at all about it."

The poll was conducted in August by Peter D. Hart

Research Associates. The results were announced today.

Nearly half of the poll respondents said they have heard

nothing at all about the broader field of nanotechnology.

Again, "there is a positive association between

awareness of nanotechnology and the belief that the

benefits of nanotechnology will outweigh the risks," the

analysts found.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081001/sc_livescience/americanscluelessaboutplanstocreatenewlifeforms;_ylt=AnrAVw5KIV0a_wp_L.BlvXgbr7sF