Online Public Relations Thoughts

 A partner of Elon Musk has tweeted that he could create modern dinosaurs if he wished in 10 or 15 years.  The fellow is a neuroscientist and not a biologist.  Maybe he could but it is far from clear that technology has progressed to that point.  Rather his communication strikes one as an idle boast and a bit of hubris.  "Science can do anything it wants."  Working with living organisms still has unknowns, and some of those might be beyond the reach of a laboratory.  The challenge is that we don't know without trying, and there are social and ethical limits to what a scientist should do.  We learned from building the atom bomb that some technologies are not a benefit to the world but once leashed cannot be put back in the bottle again.  The only prospect is containment and mutual agreement not unleash its power.  Constructing a dinosaur might not harm humanity but how would we know?  At best it would be a sideshow curiosity and there are other urgent problems to tackle in the world.