This is particularly true concerning your conclusion about weighing potential benefits against potential problems, where it seems that because “there is no way to control attempts to produce artificial life” we should therefore promote such research as a means to transparency. It is certainly true that any attempt to totally ban research of synthetic life would not be 100% successful – as Lee Silver so keenly points out in his analysis of the development and use of genetic technologies, you can’t stop people from doing what they want to do.

But unlike genetic technologies, with their promises of personal improvement that equally attract customers in an unpreventable manner, I don’t feel that this is necessarily the case with synthetic organism technologies, where the customers will primarily be government or large corporations (eg purchases meant to aid in environmental cleanup or the production of a new item meant for the marketplace). The regulation of purchase or use of synthetic organism technology is not a pipe dream; for this reason an inability to control research does not necessarily entail an impetus to carry out such research.

What I’m getting at is an argument of “it’s already being done” does not necessarily apply here, since the application of this sort of technology could very well be controlled.

To reach a more critical and supportive conclusion, maybe we should be looking into the ethical dilemmas presented by creating life in itself, and not just the problems that may arise from the use of this technology.