For
It improves medicine and helps understand biology.
Against
It risks creating dangerous or uncontrollable organisms.
Anonymous excerpts, translated where noted.
“A synthetic organism that could efficiently produce this drug would be huge.”
“It’s an amazing step in the right direction though.”
“We will never be able to control it.”
“The probability of creating a functional replicating organism from non-living macromolecules is very small, and there wouldn't be any practical use for doing so.”