It's Alive

A "biologist and entrepreneur" named Craig Venter claims to have created a synthetic chromosome, which is apparently a "significant but not final step" in the race to create new life for profit. It is to be hoped that the new life, when it emerges, will be an improvement on the common bread mould, the game show producer, the flu virus, the politician, the plague bacillus, the celebrity, the dandelion, the advertising executive, the flea, the venture capitalist, the hair louse, the welfare bureaucrat, the housefly, the stockbroker, the brown rat and the human being. Unfortunately, given that Venter seems to be thinking mainly in terms of producing "the first billion- or trillion-dollar organism" - presumably something approximating the evolutionary status of a really successful politician or other biological weapon - this appears unlikely.