Is *all* innovation good??

This is a seeming no-brainer, pitting anti-technology types against technology progressives. Yet in today's NYTimes I read an article about Craig Venter's success in creating the first synthetic DNA sequence, which his scientists are planning to put in a cellular shell and start growing into an organism. This would be a first. The article goes on to quote Venter as he discusses miraculous capabilities living cells and organisms possess.

“We have micro-organisms that live in such strong acid or base solutions that if you put your finger in, the skin would dissolve almost instantly,” Dr. Venter said in an interview. “There’s another organism that can take three million rads of radiation and not be killed.” How can a microbe withstand a blast of radioactivity that is a good 1,500 times greater than what would kill any of us virtually on the spot? “Its chromosome gets blown apart,” Dr. Venter said, “but it stitches everything back together and just starts replicating again.” - New York Times, Feb 5, 2008.

In response to this remarkable achievement I couldn't help but conjure up the film, Jurassic Park, and fired off a letter to the editor:

To the Editor,

Given what we already know about the adaptability and seeming indestructibility of various natural lifeforms (Synthetic Life, Science Times, 2/5/08), the reality of synthetic lifeforms scares me. In an age where spam, identity theft and hackers continue to plague internet users despite the expenditure of billions of dollars to combat them, how could we possibly have the hubris to believe we can control a new life form that happens to have a malevolent modus operandi?

Scary stuff, I reckon.