Round table ethics

We, the TU Delft 2009 team, pay some attention to ethics. One of our team members concentrates on this particular subject. In our opinion it is useful to have some ethical discussion within the team during discussion session. Therefore we discuss some ethical issues related to our work. Almost every week we discuss ‘the ethical question of the week’. In our opinion it is good when scientist are aware of the impact which their work might have on the society, therefore it is good to think about the ethical issues of our project as becoming scientists. The aim of the ethical question of the week is to have a discussion within the group in order to see how the individuals in our team think about certain subjects.

What is life? What is synthetic biology?

Week 31

What is life? What is synthetic biology?
What is life? There are two different theories about what life is in our group. First: a system which is able to take up energy from its environment and creates order form chaos represents life. Second: a system which is able to reproduce, has a metabolism, evolutes and has an organization (order) and is able to survive in a specific environment represent live. This is amore biological point of view toward life. During this discussion the interesting question arose: is a BioBrick life? The answers was, no a BioBrick does not represent life; it is part of an organism which is a live. So a Biobrick is part of life but it does not represent life by itself.
What is synthetic biology? Synthetic Biology is minimizing real biology. It is also intelligent evolution by rational engineering. Engineering is a very important aspect in Synthetic Biology, its applying engineering concepts in Biological concepts. We all do agree about this definition of synthetic Biology.

Biosafety

Week 32

How important is Biosafety to you? Do you think about biosafety during labwork and do you consider it as part of your job?
We agreed that we are not thinking constantly about this durning lab work. By doing a lot of lab practice during last years we are able to follow the rules properbly and work in the lab safely. Follwoing up teh rules is a habit now.
How important is Biosafety to you and which grad would you give it. Grading between 0 and 10?
0 means not important at all, 10 means vey very important. The ranking was: 3, 10, 8, 8, 10, 8, 9. Average grade is: 8, this means that we as team in genera; do care about biosafety and find it important.

Biosafety in the lab

Week 33

Who should be respponsible for safety and security in the lab?
Who should be responssible for security? In the organisation there is a hirarchie which explains who is responsibble for safety in the organization. In case there is a big accident in the lab these persons are responsible.
Who should be responssible fo the safety? We, our selfs, are responsible for the safety in the lab. We should be watching what we are doing in the lab.
Who should be liable in case of emergency? In case an accident happens while the lab workersare follow up the rules, as they should do. the person who granded the permition should be liable.

Communication

week 36

Is it important/usefull to inform the public about our work?
Yes, it is important to inform teh public about our work, as scientists.

Why is this usefull/important?
The information flow is at the moment as this: Scientist---->Journalist---->Public. Maybe it will be better when scientists also play a direct role in informing the public. Issues could easly be misunderstandend and represented differently by media, because of the lake of knowledge. Scientific work also needs funding and in general this scientific work is funded by public money, so it is important to inform them about the goals for which this public money is used.

What should our communicationgoal be as scientists?(to inform, to ask more attention, increase the public conception)?
Our goal should be informing teh public. It is not correct to hide information, we should clearly inform the public about the facts. We will not be able to explain all details, but we for sure are able to explain the main lines. Its is also important to clearly inform about the possiblilities and more important about the unpossiblities, to avoid any panic. There should also be attention for the possible side effects. The scientists should explain the occuring chance of side effects by using statistics.

Open source

week 41

Is the registry realy open source? Everybody can see the data, but is everybody also able to get BioBricks from teh registry? Are companies for instance allowed to apply the registry for BioBricks? Joomla(CSM software) for instance is open source software and everyone can use it? Should it be the same with Biobricks?
Is the registry realy open source? This is a bit unclear to us, we don't know if it is possible for companies to apply the registry for BioBricks. It is also not clear to us if research groups from an university which is not joining the iGEM competition are able to apply fot BioBricks. We will contact the iGEM HQ about this issue. Althought in our opinion it shouldn't be a problem to use Biobricks for commercial purperses, but from this a lot of other question will arise like: Who should get the financial benefits? Who has the intellectuel property right? What if a company or researcher alters a BioBrick and want to patent it? Should BioBricks be patented? This are very interessting question which should be answerd in the next years by the scientific community. In case the HQ profides us answers to the above mentioned questions we will share it with you.