Is biological intervention "playing God"?
Many people believe that environmental intervention are preferable to and should be prioritized over biological ones,but we think and have argued that so urgent are our problems,we must explore all options, including using knowledge of the biological sciences to possibly deal with social or environmental problems. There are four ways to achieve any goal, be it human survival, species diversity, or global security: modify the environment, society, human psychology or biology. All options should be explored.
Some object to "deep" human intervention in nature, like the cloning of extinct organisms or the creation of chimeric organisms, on the grounds that such interventions amount to "playing God". Since humans intervene in nature all the time and for good moral reasons, for example medicine, there cannot be something inherently morally problematic about such interventions. The focus should instead be on the types of harms that we identified above.
There has been much discussion about whether synthetic biology could really create aetificial life. A much more profound and pressing ethical question asks what kinds of life forms there should be. It is now within our power to decide.