Quote from: PeteScientists have created synthetic life in the laboratory, in a feat of ingenuity that pushes the boundaries of humankinds ability to manipulate the natural world and leaves us all facing the possiblilty of extinction.

no more so than other inventions such as, nuclaer weapons etc...

There is that cool horror movie coming out where they create that synthetic lifeform which is a blob that turns into a kid then freaky girl that goes on a rampage. This reminded me of that. Want to go see it.

Im more interested in the next step - reducing its genome to the minimum required number of base pairs to be viable for life, and in one fell swoop, utterly refuting any (creationist) claims for irreducible complexity.

Also this guys work is much more interesting:
http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2009/03/30/weekly15-George-Church-creates-building-block-for-artificial-life.html

Creating not just a bootstrapped artificial genome, but a whole cell, from the ground up. 8-)