Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has partitioned off $6 million of it’s budget for 2010 for a project called BioDesign, whose purpose is to eliminate the “randomness of of natural evolutionary advancement” by genetically engineering and breeding organisms that “produce the intended biological effect.”

What is this “intended biological affect” you ask? Simply put, Darpa wants the organisms to modified to bolster cell resistance to death, so that the organisms can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.” In other words, immortal living beings. But don’t worry, Darpa intends to quell any potential uprising/overthrowing but hardwiring a genetic killswitch that can be flipped in order to prevent unwanted behavior or prevent the organisms from being captured and/or turned against their creators.

Overall, Darpa plans on spending $20 million overall in synthetic biology, including $7.5 million specifically to “[increase] by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”

Of course, this is all a long way off, as the technology currently doesn’t exist to do what they intend to do, but if it does eventually come to be, the idea of creating brand new creations never before seen on this planet that openly mock evolution seems to be pissing into the face of God/Darwin/Generic Deity of choice. Anticipate a very rough beta testing process.

On a related note, this story comes on the heels of a US Court’s recent ruling against the patenting of genes.