Thank you for that one!

I guess I take a somewhat more pessimistic view of the future in general. I expect it'll be a lot more like "Alien Ressurection" than "Star Trek" (even the darkest of episodes). Life itself will be a commodity to be manufactured, bought, sold and disposed of at will.

I also think the moral and ethical implications of artificial life, in the end, simply won't matter to those who stand to gain profit or power through its creation. I'm not sure that ethics plays very much of a role in human decision-making at all. Most people will always do what's in their own narrow self-interest, the rest of the world be damned.

If there's a dollar to be made or advantage to be gained by the creation of artificial life, then it'll happen. Maybe a cure for cancer will be created, or maybe a devastating new weapon of mass destruction. The tragedy is that in some people's eyes, there's very little difference between the two since either could be used to gain profit and power.