Nature clarifies some Vatican comments. For a few hours today many news sites reported that the Catholic Church had added another 7 deadly sins to the time-tested first batch. These included "carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos" [my emphasis]. However, it seems as though the process was something like this:

• 1. Senior Catholic agrees to interview
• 2. Interviewer asks Senior Catholic about his personal opinions on sin
• …several steps here…
• 99. Newspaper front pages around the world proclaim new Catholic doctrine

It's usual for the Pope to set the policy in this area, allegedly after full consultation with his boss, but there's not much sign of that here. Not only would this have brought the scriptwriters of Se7en a very difficult challenge vis-a-vis the necessary sequel but one has to worry about the immortal souls of any genetic engineers who died without confession this morning, perhaps zapped by the electrophoresis powerpack while the stain of this morning's plasmid ligation was still on them (statistically likely, given the numbers). Anyway, the panic is now over and you can go back to your money-making, poverty-induced, genetically-modifying lives, people.

But why pick on sloths?