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The impacts on humanity of extraterrestrial life

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The Huyghens probe landed on Titan and searched for life. Spacecraft landed on Mars also searched for life. What will be the consequences for medicine, biology, philosophy and religion if primitive bacterial or plant life is found outside the Earth ?

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* On medical issues: a number of concerns arise - if something is truly "alien" then, if harmful, what can we do about it? An ET (extraterrestrial) pathogen may operate on metabolic processes and pathways that we have no resistance to, nor ability to exploit. [Like the movie "Andromeda Strain"] Or, as a recent terrestrial find has shown, they may be so small as to circumvent normal prophylactic filtration measures. As exciting as ET life seems, it holds the potential for massive danger to life on Earth.
* On the biologic front - to extend the ideas above, life operating on new and undiscovered chemistries would indeed be exciting. From a straight biosciences viewpoint, the thought of these discoveries is quite intriguing. Also, as we often use microbes and the like for processes like bioremediation - ...

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