The one thing that popped in my mind when reading this was "poor viruses, they put electric charge on them". :) Now it's clear that a virus is so simple that it's not even clear if it can be considered alive, but what if something similar was devised with bacteria? Where would we draw an ethical line? :)
Life is just self-replication. I don't see why it's interesting in a moral sense — especially when we're talking about something that has nothing to do with self-replication.
Anyway, we kill pigs, which are actually intelligent, so if you're looking to get worked up about something, bacteria in batteries seem like pretty odd candidates.
