To be good journalism, this story would need to include references, so people who want to have some idea of what the researchers are actually doing could find the information easily.

Fascinating look at synthetic biology and its religious detractors. More could have been done to explore the ethical objections of detractors.

Informative, but a bit too much cheer leading. For example, are there any risks associated with building synthetic viruses that "need to hijack a cell" to reproduce? Perhaps not, but the article fails to ask questions like this. Similarly, issues of ethics--which extend well beyond religious dogma--also merit more careful consideration.

An important subject covered by Newsweek and therefore written at the 8th grade reading level. The article does not delve deeply into this complex subject, instead it skims the surface focusing on the Gee Whiz look at what we may be able to do. When it is necessary to refer to skeptics the author invariably refers to their skepticism as "religiously based" It does not occur to the author that there may be reasons other than religion to be both cautious and skeptical of this current development in biotechnology.

This is a big topic, literally as big as life itself. It has the potential to change the world at least as much as the development of computers has.