Serious scientific thinkers have long speculatedand, indeed, sometimes fearedthat man may eventually be able to tailor living organisms, including himself, to suit highly specific needs. Though such "genetic engineering" is still a distant goal, it seemed just a little closer last week. After a dazzling series of experiments, researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo reported that they have succeeded many times in reassembling parts of three different amoebaemicroscopic, one-celled animalsinto one fully functioning new cell.
Other scientists have "created" new cells in the past, usually by taking the nucleus of one and implanting it into another whose nucleus...