"I don't really know if it's going to undermine the morals of today's youth to know if they can synthesize mycoplasma," Church said. "There are definitely security, safety and policy issues."

Church explained that as new technology lowers costs of synthetic biology engineering, it could be more accessible to hackers, which is a concern. But the work JCVI is doing, synthesizing bacteria, isn't as much of a concern regarding bioterrorism, as engineering a virus, Church said.


"Viruses are more serious, they don't respond to antibiotics, and they're much better at avoiding the immune system," he said, also pointing out that synthetic viruses have been around for a decade.

But science and technology are only going to get more advanced. Church proposes to tackle these growing concerns with licensing, surveillance, safety design and testing.

With regard to licensing, Church said, "It's like cars. You wouldn't want to have some random elementary school kid driving down the street without knowing what he was doing, or the car never to have been safety tested."

But even with licensing, safety design and testing in place, none of it will matter without proper surveillance. Church pointed out that everybody involved could be licensed, but that doesn't mean anything if they don't follow the rules.

"You need to have rules," he said.

It's important to focus on these types of solutions, said Church, instead of worrying about the problems, because ultimately, "it's not like you're going to stop people from doing this," he said.

Crossing the Rubicon?

In order to confront the concerns of whether scientists should be dabbling in this type of research, The Hastings Center -- a neutral body, dedicated to bioethics research -- recently wrapped up its third workshop discussing synthetic biology, prior to the JCVI announcement.

The goal of workshops, explained Gregory Kaebnick, the center's research scholar and editor of The Hastings Center Report, was to look at and evaluate some of the intrinsic moral concerns about synthetic biology, including "playing god" and whether the moral Rubicon should be crossed.

The workshops were composed of experts in social sciences, philosophy and religion.



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