Commission For The Study Of Bioethical Issues, Assemble!

This past Thursday, scientists from the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they'd engineered a self-replicating bacterial cell using "off the shelf" chemicals and entirely synthetic ingredients. In the words of the Washington Post, they "creat[ed] life from scratch." Zounds!

On its face, this seems pretty exciting (science! wow!), but it apparently poses a few ethical concerns - skeptics say that this new process presents new opportunities for a super-potent new set of biological weapons. Even though many have already written off the potential for a major threat, this crappy, mean use could possibly weigh out the associated benefits of, say, providing manufactured bacteria to "digest pollutants or produce fuels." But where's the Penn connection? Find out after the jump.

To help make some sense of this dilemma, Obama has called upon his Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which is chaired by none other than our Madam President Amy Gutmann! Here's to hoping that A-Gut gets the panel in gear and helps the POTUS learn more about this big ol' development. The future of science is in her hands!

Download the presidential interaction here if you wanna.