Mail Call: Improve on Nature?(Letter to the editor)

Readers of our June 4 report on efforts to create life in the lab were divided over the project. "Kudos!" cheered one who urged the scientists to "speed up their endeavors." Another said, "Religion should not enter into this." But a third warned, "Can we control what we create?"

A Brave New World?

Your June 4 cover story, "Playing God," surprised me. I never dreamed that the idea of turning sunlight into biofuel through a cell would be discovered. Religious belief should not enter into consideration of this--it concerns the world's future. We know we'll have a shortage of fossil fuel, so this idea should be tried.

Hansley Tacouri

Triolet, Mauritius

Biodevices and creating life in the laboratory sound like great ideas but they could be used against us in the future. Like the atom bomb, which was originally created to combat "evil" nations but now poses a threat to all mankind, tinkering with Mother Nature may have advantages initially, like finding a cure for devastating diseases like cancer. But is it worth the risk of creating something that we may not be able to control in the future? Do the benefits really outweigh the risks? As it is, we have biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction in today's marketplace adding to our worries. Like the experiments performed by Nazi German scientists on Holocaust victims, we could face the threat of creating an unpredictable "super-human." Leave God's work alone.

Vicky Mamieh