As Dr Venter's less hysterical colleagues have noted, that is not the same as creating life. It is more accurately described as "mimicking life". Given the complexity of achieving even that task (the very simple form of life Dr Venter copied has more than a million chemical "letters" in its DNA code), Dr Venter has certainly pulled off something substantial. But it may turn out not have any significant applications at all. It might be possible to use it to manufacture a form of algae which could absorb CO2 and produce oil – but it might not. Although Exxon has invested money in just such a process, there isn't a lot of evidence that the project will succeed.  Dr Venter's technique also could aid the production of vaccines. But other than increasing the potency of medicines used to fight infections, no one claims that there will be any specific medical benefits from it. Even Dr Venter thinks that using his technique on any cells other than the most primitive forms of bacteria is "a long way off". For the foreseeable future, it cannot be used on human cells, or even on more complex bacteria. So unlike stem-cell research, which hopes to find ways to make damaged human organs, nerves and tissue repair themselves, it does not hold out the promise of cures for dozens of presently untreatable diseases.  So why all the fuss? I don't think it is because we need to be frightened of the prospect of terrorists getting hold of the technology and using it to create terrible new techniques of germ warfare. Replicating what Dr Venter's team has done is far beyond their capacity. No, the source of our anxiety about the work is rather the ruthless demonstration that the essence of life is simply a series of chemical reactions.  You may say that we knew that already, and we did – but only in theory. Now Dr Venter has shown it in practice. Copy the chemical code that controls cell reproduction – the equivalent to a computer's software – put that code into a cell, and voilà! The cell reproduces itself. It is alive. And if it works for the cells of bacteria, it will work for our cells, too: with us, there are more components – we have 25,000 genes in each of our cells, as opposed to the 500 that control the reproduction of the bacterium that Dr Venter used – but the mechanisms are the same. The differences are a matter of quantity, not quality.  That sends a shiver down the human spine. What has happened to the mystery of life, the intangible, miraculous glory that we think is somehow its essence? It has disappeared. There are only molecules and the void. As for anything more elaborate than a string of chemicals – such as, for instance, the soul – well: we "do not have need of that hypothesis", as the French mathematician Laplace famously replied when asked where God was located in his cosmological system.  The universe is a bleak and comfortless place when life's essence is just a sequence of chemicals. The reason why Dr Venter's work has created alarm is that it holds up a vision of what we are that we do not want to accept. We can't bite his apple without eating its worm: and that leaves a very bad taste.
It is painful to discover from Craig Venter's synthetic DNA that the glory of    life boils down to pure chemical reactions, says Alasdair Palmer.