From the high desert and the great American southwest I did you all. Good evening. Good afternoon, good morning. Whatever time it may be, wherever you are in all of those time zones out there. I'm Art Bell, and this is coast to coast. How are you all doing? I'm going to tell you right up front. It's been a very difficult week in the Bell household.

Ramona, my wife, a beautiful wife, has had a really serious asthma attack over the last week.

And so I've been kind of playing a household person.

And as a result, my back, she's better now. She's better. But my back, from the flying band in the bar my back is kind of beginning of some spasms so we'll see how it goes tonight it should be

assuming that i can hang in there very very interesting program professor john beckwith

is scheduled to be here and uh the reason he's scheduled to be here.

And the reason he's scheduled to be here is because of that story that I just kept harping and harping and harping on

because I think it is so important.

You know that story about scientists creating life?

One more time for you and then for the professor scientists in Rockville are to announce this morning.

This was now November 21st that they plan to create a new form of life in a laboratory dish,

a project that raises ethical and safety issues but also promises to illustrate the fundamental mechanics of living organisms.

Jay Craig Vetter, the gene scientist with a history of pulling off very unlikely successes.

Successes, and Hamilton O. Smith, a Nobel laureate, are behind the plan.

Tonight's guest probably will know these people.

Their intent is to create a single cell,

partially man-made organism with the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life.

If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist, i.e., we are creating life.

To ensure safety, Smith, inventor said the cells will be deliberately hobbled.

Remember this story now? To render it incapable and infecting people?

It will also be strictly confined and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the environment.

Well, tonight's guest is a Harvard man who was at the absolute zenith of genetic research and had himself a lot of breakthroughs at the beginning of all this and now has reservations about where it might

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