News that Vietnam war veteran turned geneticist Craig Venter has created 'artificial life' with a 'water-mark' or trademark (?) in the concocted DNA sequence before it 'takes over' the cell into which it is introduced has caused quite a stir (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-genome). There is much debate about the ethics of making a new form of goat mastitis bacillum, especially as Venter seems firmly rooted in a profit-making role (with one idea of using artificial organisms to remove 'excessive' carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). It is also argued that his discoveries could boost terrorists wishing to make a low cost agent of destruction (as if there aren't enough naturally-occurring potential agents). There are clearly dangers in this technology (which, although remarkable, seems relatively simple) but that would be true of many such developments and there is no chance of getting this 'genie back into the bottle'.
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