Page A17?

That’s where the New York Times plays Craig Venter’s announcement of a computer-generated synthetic genome able to take over a cell’s operations–and reproduce. In the second graf, Nicholas Wade quotes Venter as saying this is “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”

That’s obviously a carefully crafted comment, and reporters are free to react with skepticism–indeed, that’s exactly what they should do. But when a prominent and highly accomplished scientist makes that claim, doesn’t that deserve better than Page A17? Or, to put it another way, how the hell can that NOT make Page 1?????

The Times didn’t even put it on the National page; it’s merely one in a grab-bag of national stories. The National page leads with student protests over budget cuts at Puerto Rican campuses, a story few of us will remember tomorrow, unless we happen to be students at a Puerto Rican college. Do you remember the last student protests over budget cuts? Of course not.

Also placed more prominently than Venter’s research are a story on a Harrisburg, Pa. incinerator, one on the White House gate crashers, and, on the front page, one on the sex life of a Chinese computer science professor and another on inflated pensions in Yonkers, N.Y.

No comment.

The Washington Post looks a little better, running its story, by David Brown, on Page 3. Brown puts skeptical comments first, following up with Venter a graf or two later.

I wonder… How many science writers are happy to jump on skeptical comments–happier than they should be–because they think Venter is arrogant and get tired of hearing him say that he can do things other people can’t do? (Even if he’s often been right.) I have no idea what’s in Wade’s head, or Brown’s. This is pure speculation. Still, I wonder…

The AP shows with a very nice story by Lauran Neergaard. She provides a very nice explanation of the work, with reaction from several other researchers from Harvard, MIT, and elsewhere. A very competent story from the always competent (and prolific) Neergaard.

She also notes that President Obama reacted to the news, calling on the presidential bioethics commission to assess the development. Even with a political angle, the Post couldn’t find time for this?

Dave Perlman gets it right in a Page 1 story in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Although the advance is far from creating ‘life in a test tube,’ it was a singular achievement in making and assembling the chemical components of genes that functioned inside living cells exactly the way natural genes do,” he writes.

He does his due diligence, getting reaction, and provides perspective, recalling the famous meeting on genetic engineering held at the Asilomar conference center near Monterey, Calif., in 1975. If I’m recalling correctly, Perlman was there, covering it for the Chronicle.

Nature news gives us a very nice reaction, in a package of eight comments from “synthetic-biology experts.” (Not synthetic biologists; Venter hasn’t made one of those–yet.) Ethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania calls the work “one of the most important scientific achievements in the history of mankind.” The Nature comments contain plenty of skepticism–one researcher calls the work “a technical advance, not a conceptual one.” Several make clear that this is not synthetic life, and they question the approach. But all agree the news is worth our attention.

Among the newspapers, everybody, it seems, plays Tea Party candidate Rand Paul’s comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act far above Venter. Can’t wait until Paul weighs in on Craig.

Grist for the mill: Science press release.

- Paul Raeburn

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