In news that would make even the most world-weary reader wince, Darpa has made the decision to go ahead on research that will, according to them, result in new organisms that don't age or get diseases to be used for war. Thanks to Darpa's $6 million dollar program, it seems a new type of organism will be created that may stunt even the concept of alien life. Evolution, it seems, is about to change.

Biodesign, a project intended to result in a new type of organism that doesn't age, is the name of the program Darpa has set up to take over the natural course of evolution. And in addition to that, each organism would have a "kill switch" that shut its life force down if the enemy got a hold of it. From a purely military perspective it seems like the ultimate soldier. Imagine a creature that is programmed to feel no pain, never question orders, and come fresh out of the cloning tube it was hatched from already pre-programmed with an instinctual knowledge of all forms of weaponry, tactics, language, medicine, interrogation, and saluting the right way. Such a creature would require no training, and many generals would find it far easier to sacrifice a hundred thousand of them to take over a small area of land. And of course the ethical concerns of what they were would be measured in dollars, rather than the tears of loved ones. Such creatures could be made to even look like war machines, replacing the typical human features with monstrous ones designed to strike fear into the hearts and minds of the enemy. With no question that such a creature was not human, even less attention would be paid to them by tax payers and humanitarian organizations.

But if we don't know what a soul is, how can we be sure we can create a complex organism that doesn't have one? With memory comes an understanding of the world around us. And regardless of whether the heart pumps blood or something new scientists develop that's better than blood, many philosophers say a soul is not something created but something earned through experience. How would you program a war machine to interact with other humans? Would it be merely cold and calculating, or would it in time actually become evil? Such a force may in time decide not to serve humanity, but rather to become its master. Hence the "kill switch" expected to be installed as this research progresses. Ethical considerations aside for the kill switch, it's a solution that works only in a vacuum. Evolution is the process by which survivors of one generation pass on survivable traits to the next. So what would happen if two of these creatures were not installed with the kill switch and had offspring? The trait would be removed within one generation. It's easy to imagine that the greatest opponent mankind may ever face, could be a result of a creation by its own hand. Evolution, most certainly, is about to change.

The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.

The project comes as Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”

Of course, Darpa’s up against some vexing, fundamental laws of nature — not to mention bioethics — as they embark on the lab beast program. First, they might want to rethink the idea of evolution as a random series of events, says NYU biology professor David Fitch. “Evolution by selection is nota random process at all, and is actually a hugely efficient design algorithm used extensively in computation and engineering,” he e-mails Danger Room.

Even if Darpa manages to overcome the inherent intelligence of evolutionary processes, overcoming inevitable death can be tricky. Just ask all the other research teams who’ve made stabs at it, trying everything from cell starvation to hormone treatments. Gene therapy, where artificial genes are inserted into an organism to boost cell life, are the latest and greatest in life-extension science, but they’ve only been proven to extend lifespan by 20 percent in rats.

But suppose gene therapy makes major strides, and Darpa does manage to get the evolutionary science right. They’ll also have a major ethical hurdle to jump. Synthetic biology researchers are already facing the same questions, as a 2009 summary from the Synthetic Biology Project reports:

The concern that humans might be overreaching when we create organisms that never before existed can be a safety concern, but it also returns us to disagreements about what is our proper role in the natural world (a debate largely about non-physical harms or harms to well-being).

Even expert molecular geneticists don’t know what to make of the project. Either that, or they’re scared Darpa might sic a bio-bot on them. “I would love to comment, but unfortunately Darpa has installed a kill switch in me,” one unnamed expert tells Danger Room.