Artificial Life Plan Urged

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30856, 15 September 1965, Page 17

Artificial Life Plan Urged

( N.Z .P .A.-Reuter—Copyright) ATLANTIC CITY, September 14.

An American scientist ’ last night suggested that the artificial creation of life might be set as a “national goal,” such as the current space programme or the development of nuclear energy 20 years ago.

Dr. Charles Price, president of the American Chemical Society, and chariman of the chemistry department of the University of Pennsylvania made his suggestion at a session of the society’s national conference in Atlantic City. His views were later expanded in an interview. Can Be Done

Dr. Price said: “The job can be done—it is merely a matter of time and money.” He added that the first re-

.suits, coming within 10 or 20 years, might be the ability to achieve “more efficient production of plants and animals, or even species doing things never done before. It might even be possible to improve human characteristics.

“I can’t imagine that the ability to synthesise new life will, not happen within a century or so,” he said. If the task were not pursued as a national—or possibly an international —goal, it

might “come about haphazardly.” Dr. Price, who said he had expressed his ideas in letters to scientific leaders in a number of Government agencies, continued: “They were much interested. In general, the reaction was that the idea should first be considered carefully by the scientific community before being brought to the Government.”

Fantastic Strides

He went on: “We have been making fantastic strides in uncovering the basic chemistry of the life process, and the structure of many of the key components of living systems. “It seems to me we may be no further today from at least partial syntheses of living systems than we were in the 1920 s from the release of nuclear energies, or in the 1940 s from a man-in-space. "The political, social, biological and economic consequences of such a breakthrough would dwarf those of atomic energy or the space programme. "Success could lead to modified plants and algae for the synthesis of foods, fibres and antibiotics, to improved growth properties of plants and animals, or even to improved characteristics for man himself.” He said that natural evolution was “governed by chance,” and living species today “do not represent the only fruitful and useful combinations” of attributes that might be possible.