You're overreacting. This thing isn't what I would call an independent, organic, living creature. It's more like a proof of concept for the technology to create synthetic organs, like human hearts. This "jellyfish" requires electricity from the scientists for it to function.
It also only does one thing and can't eat or repair itself, let along reproduce. It's more like mechanical engineering using life as parts than making life.
Yah, this thing is barely "artificial life" the only thing living about it is the cells and tissue. Without the electric pulses, it's essentially a flap of rat muscle. But it's pretty cool though. Possibilities for being able to test drugs on it and even go on to use it as a platform for creating new organs are impressive.
That's really cool, I would love to see if they could make it "autonomous" (by that I mean not requiring an electric field) by adding some pacemaker cells or something like that. EDIT: Well, looks like that's what they are planning anyways.
They said it was hauled from the Challenger Deep, but I'm positive that beast never swam in terrestrial waters until a week ago. There is tranquilizer gun in the shark cage, but I'm not sure it would work on this species … you're welcome to try.
I'm willing to bet that some team out there has done this before but its only gone public now. 2012 Doomsday people. ...I'm just waiting for the day when Griffins are made
Pfft.... I feel like god when I make a science experiment volcano. Your definition of god is too strict!
Really, I don't see why this is so great. I agree with you. You can run an electric current through a dead body and it will twitch and move. Doesn't mean it alive or anything. Pretty much any organic tissue will move with an electric current. They used to do that back in the old days (run electricity through a body) as a sideshow. Apparently it still amuses people :/
It is great, for progress in creating artificial organs, and drug testing. People are thinking OMG they are trying to create synthetic animals!11 That's not the point of this.
I don't know, I feel like while it may be a step forward in that regard, it is a definite baby step if anything.
For artificial organs, I agree that is a while off. Using this technology though I feel like it's not a stretch to design some organic "model" for which to test how drugs affect a certain tissue.