Though writing an original chemical blueprint for a human being is a far-off possibility, given that the human genome has a sequence of three billion chemical pairs that make up each person's unique DNA, the secrecy of the meeting (no tweeting, no media, invite only) alarmed some people who are worried about the ethical questions this type of genetic engineering poses. After all, synthesizing a human genome is becoming cheaper and easier with more advanced technologies.

Such a technique could make it possible, as The New York Times points out, to use a synthetic genome to create, through cloning for instance, human beings without biological parents.

"The creation of new human life is one of the last human-associated processes that has not yet been industrialised or fully commodified. It remains an act of faith, joy, and hope," Drew Endy, a bioengineering professor at Stanford University, and Laurie Zoloth, a medical ethics professor at Northwestern University, wrote in an essay criticizing the secrecy of the meeting.