E'telekeli.

You said the following in response to an earlier comment of mine:

>The technological power in biological systems is both frightening and amazing. Imagine building a machine that could
>do all of the things a common house fly can do?
>
>Why would we want a machine to spread disease and lay eggs that hatch into maggots???

I'm certainly no fan of the common fly (killed enough of them) but they're still amazing creatures. Think about how hard it would be to build a machine the size of a rasin that could fly, has a fully autonomous autopilot with image recognition capability, 3-D navigation capability, automatic collision avoidance, chemical sensory capability and can reproduce itself. No way we could build anything like that anytime soon using silicon and metal. It would cost millions to design and build a full sized (6 ft. wingspan) remotely piloted vehicle that could do that (a cruise missle has most of that capability). What useful thing could be done with a reprogrammed fly? How about programming the thing to sleep during the day then at night fly around inside the house looking for bits of dirt on the floor. It would then carry the dirt to a flat surface with a very specific pattern on it and leave the dirt there. The modified fly could be made with an attractive color, designed to stay away from people and eat only nice things, i.e. fruit. A swarm of these would constantly clean your house. Here's a military application. Design the fly so it looks like an ordinary fly. Drop several hundred in a single special container suspended from a parachute behind enemy lines. The flies are released when the container hits the ground. The flies are programmed to fly away from the container in a radial direction. Their also programmed to recognize shapes like tanks, missle launchers, etc. When they see one they immediately fly back to the container and then bite on a sensor attached to the container. The container then sends out a radio signal that an enemy tank is within such-a-such distance from the container.

Gary