Team:Paris/Ethics ethicalreport

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Ethical Report

TITRE

Preface

• Why wonder about ethics in a biological engineering competition?

The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (IGEM) is an undergraduate competition, initiated by the MIT since 2004. In four years, the competition grew up exponentially : from 5 teams in 2004 to 110 team in 2009. Within the context of its participation in IGEM 09 competition, the team of Paris proposes a reflexion about ethical stakes in synthetic biology, in order to perform that participation to exercise our critical reflexion. Our “disciplinary” motivations to lead that ethical reflexion will be develop in a more formal introduction. We propose to wonder, in that preface, about the several “causes” of the necessity of that reflexion, mainly by wondering about the way interdisciplinarity encourages reflexivity. We decide to establish the fact that ethical reflexion is necessary linked to a critical perspective, that point will be enlighten in the introduction.

Synthetic biology can be read as an encouragement to interdisciplinarity, as a disciplinary challenge by bringing together, in a unique life science, perspectives from engineering and practices from molecular biology. That interdisciplinarity stimulates researchers : the necessity to change from their initial “disciplinary standpoint” in order to come up to synthetic biology specifications, requiring to change position, to become alternatively insider and outsider towards their own science formation. That changing sometimes permits the development of a critical perception, or, at least, make it more attainable. That critical perspective permitted by reflexivity is one of the way to get to ethical reflexion.

Among the large field of synthetic biology, the IGEM competition invites young scientists, future researchers to interdisciplinary experimentation. Heterogeneous teams, focus on freedom, innovation and motivation can lead teams to perform that disciplinary “insider/outsider” team standing. Specifications of the competition encourage to that reflexive position. In other word, the point is how exploration and experimentation in the way to build up an IGEM project can lead teams to that critical reflexion. Freedom and experimentation, encourage by the structure of the competition, make the ethical reflexion both relevant and accessible to the teams' mind.

If we go ahead our inquiry, crossing several institutional or disciplinary structures which seems to raise up critical standpoint and ethical reflexion, we have to examine our own structure of participation in the competition : our team. We can find two “originals” explanations to that reflexivity of the team. The Parisian team is build by volunteers to the “IGEM call” made by the Center for Research and Interdisciplinary and not only because of the student's membership of a certain university. Therefore, the team sociology, its figure is hybrid both socially and disciplinary. Students are from high school to undergraduated degrees, disciplines and specializations are large and various. Thus, we had to perform, in a collective work, both difficulties and odds of that “different regard” of the other team members. In the course of the project development, that “different regard” of the members runs to transformation, becoming a “shared regard” by building up our project and knowledge, in the process of building a team.

That differences between members, understood as a wealth, was already in the mind of the researchers of the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity. The Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI) was founded in 2005 inside the Medicine University of Paris Descartes and define itself as a convivial place at the crossroad between Life Sciences and exact, natural, cognitive and social sciences. New way of teaching and learning are daily practices at the CRI, for graduate students, Phd and researchers. The originality of that collaborative, non hierarchical interactions between students and teachers can be find in the autonomy of the student (they collectively choose the content of the classes) but also in the main research's themes and perspectives. The CRI “call for participation” to IGEM has to be understand in that perspective of getting to student critical tools, understood as a wealth in the scientific approach.

Several effects and new questions will rise of that interdisciplinarity, reflexivity and critical perspectives. What are the effects of that institutional and disciplinary causes of the ethical questions? Why and how can we enlighten what is “new” in biological engineering and in the IGEM competition through ethical reflexion? As we will analyze it in introduction, we will have to consider the ethical reflexion as necessary, once we have admit the social responsibilities of science and scientists regarding the social effects of their theoretical and material production. Our work will be lead by an other imperative of the ethical reflexion, in order to make it concrete and not to give up to that intellectual temptation to go through concepts and methods without actually “doing something” about it. That imperative is making that ethical reflexion “practical” and so, to see who, where and when the decision process is made and how we can operate on it. Beside our aim, a rapid check on the institutional literature about synthetic biology (see "Institutional text and researches" here [1]) make us consider the fact that that reflexion is shared between different kind of actor of that scientific field, especially States, international organizations and national agencies. The ethical questions about synthetic biology is also and mainly about questioning the governance of that field. How, as a first step, manage the debate? Then, how supply the decision making? In other words, who is going to decide? Who, after putting stakes into light, will deal and manage the tensions link to that stakes? That tension inhere in what could be the definition of “ethic in science” : the coexistence, the “harmony” between a free scientific research, both in theories and practices, and the social responsibilities of that scientific theories and practices. The necessity of the ethical question can now be seen as “viral”, once accepted, it lead us necessarily to the question of the governance, of the decision making, of the action and regulation, from now, each seen as something necessary too.

Methods

Introduction

Ethical question in synthetic biology