So like mid-shift or are there any limits to this?

Oh? I've seen several similar claims in media that always, on closer look, ended up as some combination of already organic/live parts with synthetic parts. Did we ever managed to make somehing "alive" strictly from something synthetic/dead?

But isn't the intent and not the scale that makes it illegal? Scale only evidence for the intent.

30 years ago when I was 15 or so. From time to time it worries me a bit.

I'm not familiar with experiment and I certainly don't subscribe to any creationist logic. But until science can create life from death (a proof that we understand it well enough) we can't really claim much about it or eliminate intelligent desing, however unprobable it seemed. And as far as I know, currently there isn't even consensus on definition of life.