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Biosafety and biosecurity concerns

In the first part of our analysis, we will focus on biosafety and biosecurity problems, a primary concern surrounding synthetic biology. Our analysis is based on the synthesis of arguments from a heterogeneous literature. Thus, as stated in the introduction, we must try to take into account the polyphony of ethical discourses. By reading these papers, we can find a homogeneous ensemble of arguments and warnings, showing that homogeneity could happen even in polyphony, when every social actor has the same interest, creating an invisible and informal consensus. We will use the evaluations of Vivagora (Vivagora), a French intellectual association that studies the stakes of biotechnologies, the ethical report Life to Lego of the Delft University of Technology (Flipse 2008) in Netherlands for IGEM 08, two monitoring strategical reports from French State (Note de veille stratégique (Suet 2009)) and the European Union (through the Synbiosafe initiative (Church 2004)(Synbiosafe)) and the paper A Synthetic Biohazard Non-proliferation Proposal by George M. Church, professor of genetics at the Harvard Medical School (Church 2004).

Biosafety and biosecurity are neologisms build to express new forms of alerts against risks linked to technologies of contemporary life sciences. Biosecurity's reflexions focus on “biologic accidents”, involuntaries, and unexpected consequences of certain scientific handling. Through these “bioerrors”, for example, we can think about the involuntary release of a synthetic organism into the environment, or the unexpected production of toxins or pathogenic agents by an organism that was thought to be under control. Biosecurity is about risks posed by a malicious mind, a person who wants to harm. That threat is embodied in the “social part” of the bioterrorist. The “subjects”, centers of interest of biosecurity and biosafety are also what justified their common analysis. Health, regarding human, and environmental concerns, regarding “non human”, are at the heart of the ethical perspective we will perform. Biosecurity and biosafety are very present in the synthetic biology literature and that presence can be read under the light of M. A. Hermitte’s explanations about the fact that, in our society of science and technologies, both promises and anguishes are formulated at the same time (Hermitte 2007).

Both kind of risks can be divided and connected through two concepts : malice and failure. In the texts we studied, we found the main distinction between these concepts to be the identification of the person who is at the origin of the action (the scientist and the terrorist) and the nature of his intentions, his wills. We have to notice that failure is attached to scientific work and is opposed to the malice of the terrorist will. Intentions, errors or “harming will”, in ethical reflexion, are substitutes for other concepts that we usually use to distinguish “terrorist” and “scientist”. Thus, “knowledge”, “work” or other social aspects are not present here. We do not distinguish these cases by their intellectual and handling capacities but by their intentions. Even worst, the scientist seems to undergo, in that portrait, natural unpredictability and errors while voluntary procedure of the terrorist seems to confer him a better relation to knowledge, at least more efficient. Failure is related to the scientific handling while success is related to the terrorist perspective. That point is quite risky for the social perception of synthetic biology, “essentializing” the discipline in a dangerous light, success being easier when you want to hurt others. It also leads us to consider the democratization of knowledge in new disciplines of life science. That kind of insignificance of knowledge represents the fact that is not the main distinction anymore : everyone can have knowledge of the life sciences, it is not a principle of distinction anymore. That point entertain the risks perception : for example, the fact that Roger Brent, Director of Molecular Science Institute of Berkeley, estimates that 100,000 people are able to create their own anthrax is a very frightening argument, encouraging critics of that democratization process. The last element we can get from that analysis is the new mythical construction of the social aspects of our protagonists, the scientist and the terrorist. I use the “mythical” word to refer to the cultural influence of sciences in the construction of the way we perceive the world and the social agent. Thus, in the theoretical perspective of philosophers such as Donna Haraway (Balmer and Martin 2009), we can draw the mythical figures that seem to embody a part of western culture frightened about the uncontrolled holder of knowledge. The social figure of the terrorist and the scientist can be considered under that light. That new cyborg figures, hybrids of promises and threats, products of our techno-scientific, post-industrial and western societies.

A. Biosafety

1. Questions

• a-Questioning biosafety matters?

In parallel with that new cultural construction of the protagonists of knowledge, as Synbiosafe points out, an ethical perspective will have to succeed in a new challenge for risks perception.

« In traditional genetic engineering the risk assessment is based on the donor organisms. Most transgenic organisms so far contain genes from relatively few parental organisms. In synthetic biology, however, the situation changes because organisms can be created with a large number of genetic donors or even without any natural templates at all. Also instead of changing only few genes, with synthetic biology we will be able to create completely new genetic networks without known counterparts in nature. Given the absence of natural templates as a basis for solid evaluation, how can a risk assessment be carried out under such circumstances? »

Is other words, are we able to integrate the techniques and technologies that are performed in synthetic biology with our social devices of risks prevention?

• b)What are the biosafety problems?*

What are these problems? How are they formulated in our lectures? A set of problems can be drawn, we'll try to justify it in the more complete and concise way.

To introduce our point, we will refer to a question asked by the Synbiosafe report, wondering about risks in the perspective of the “rejection of novelty”. The Synbiosafe report wonders about reliance on new protocols in order to answer to the new risks when some people say that nothing is new in synthetic biology, referring to risks in life science in general. The European initiative retaliates to those critics, underlining the contradiction of their purpose : how can we promote such “novelties” in synthetic biology and, in the same time, claim that nothing new is happening about risks?

Discourses we are about to analyze, in the preventive dynamic of the ethical reflexion, have to be thought of in the stages upstream of the incident and challenged to find “efficient answers” even if problems are not yet present to us.

• c)How to evaluate risks?*

As already mentioned, risk evaluation seems to be a necessary preliminary step to any satisfying ethical reflexion. Are we able to understand the stakes? Through what means and what formulations?

One of the new ways to perceive ethical stakes can be find in the TU Delft ethical report, by mathematizing the analysis of the risks.

« When making a decision, like the decision whether or not to use Synthetic Biology in an application, one balances the risks against the benefits. But is actually meant by “risk” isn’t always clear. Textbooks state that the Risk is the magnitude of the Hazard when it takes place, multiplied by the Frequency in which these hazards actually occur (R = H * F). These risks are partially factual risks, which can be scientifically assessed, like assessing the chance that an organism will share DNA with surrounding organisms upon deliberate release into the environment. There are also virtual risks, like exploring the probability of creating a biological weapon with open source BioBricks. When the future impact of a certain decision, like in the case of using Synthetic Biology in increasing levels of artificialness, risk assessment actually becomes risk perception: the response of the public, NGOs or consumers are unknown, as well as the scientific possibilities and application areas. If the risk is “low enough” (and one has to wonder who decides that), a certain action can be justified. Some would calculate the Justification of a decision as the Impact of something going well, times the Chance of it going well, minus the actual risk (J = I * C – H * F). »

That pragmatical perspective create a balance between possible risks and benefits of an application, putting that balance in the moment of the design of that application. After that demonstration, the author of the report has to concede its limits, mainly in the arbitrary choice of the variables. Degrees of certainty and strategical variability in the position of the social actor through the evaluation of risks also has to be taken into account. Thus, an NGO working on biotech risks will develop a more alerted position than a genomic laboratory. It can be interesting to notice, through this light, the importance of the variability of defended positions about risks and solutions, depending on the strategies of actors.

• d)The intuition of “nature”*

The work of the french association Vivagora enriched our approach about discourses on biosafety by referring to nature. What can we do about unexpected mutation of an organism in the environment? What can we do if a laboratory fails in containment and that a pathogenic agent escapes? Before that, Synbiosafe alerts us about the fact that environmental propagation is, sometimes, the main aim of an application, in particular about green and depollution application. Environmental biosensors need to be deliberately introduced into environment. Facing the weak capacities to evaluate risks, how can we be assured that the synthetic organism will succeed in the task it was designed for and no others? How can we control its behavior?

Through that variability that handicap us, Vivagora adds a fixed element, something solid we can hang on to : the natural dynamics that determines all organisms, evolution. The theoretical and paradigmatical base of the theory of evolution in life science seems to impart it with enough authority to be the element needed to fix risk evaluation. Thus, we can be sure that any organism is about to mutate and propagate in an adaptation process to its environment. Precaution linked to that point is then attached to the concept of control. Development, mutations and other kinds of evolutions of a synthetic organism has to be controlled. That control, however, has to be done through means of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is thus able to answer autonomously to its own stakes. That control has to be faced from the beginning of a project, in the design of the application, to prevent the match with environment. Thus, precaution is at the heart of that process : from the formulation of the ethical risks to its material and biological answer.

2.Answers

What kind of answers are proposed or brought by our actors?

• a)Biological answers with social faces*

Vivagora doesn't defend any position but portray proposals from different researchers. Thus radical modification of organisms is proposed to make them unable to survive into the wilds and to cross with other species. It is the idea that “the less natural will be our production, the less they will be risky”. How to perceive that proposal? The internal logic of that idea, that more synthesis will lead to more security isn't a refuge in denial of risks? Regarding unknown evaluation of risks about the reaction of a mutated organism in a natural environment, can we trust our intuition about the security of a parallel system? How can we be ensured of the non-reaction of the organism, even the “less” natural? What if the mutation, despite all, happens, what will be our means of action? The prevention and “upstream” alerts of ethical perspectives don't seem to be satisfied by the same adjectives. Thus, uncertainty about risks coming with a preventive approach is reassuring but, that reassurance isn't coming with the uncertainty of answers.

Synbiosafe mentions the proposal of a parallel biological system which won't interact or exchange with other organisms. The European initiative refers to a “unconventional” biosafety system, through the idea of “high external control” in which the conditions and possibilities of existence of the organism will be controlled and determined by man.

A recent article of Philippe Marlière precises a new framework for biosafety for synthetic genomes (Marliere 2009) based on : • Physical containment, • Trophical containment, • Evolutional containment, • Semantic containment.

At the opposite of Genetically Modified Organisms GMO, the author wants to design Genetically Secured or Safed Organisms, e.g. GSO.

• • • (1) « Physical containment »***

The most basic containment for GMO is “physical containment”. Even if the GMO strains are in a secure laboratory, it is imaginable that these strains could escape, as it was the case with Foot and Mouth Virus Released from Government laboratory in august 2007. New kinds of barrier have to be set-up.

• • • (2) ”Trophical containment”***

Trophic containment would prevent metabolic cross-feed. The GSO needs rare or naturally unknown substances to survive (artificial vitamins).

• • • (3) “Evolutional containment”***

In Wikipedia : “it is about creating modified organisms, recombinant (for example, “reprogrammed” bacteria conceived to be unadapted to autonomous survival in nature. In order to reduce production costs, it is already easy to produce massively new recombinant and reprogrammed organisms with no natural equivalent. If they are very different and highly altered, they have little viability in a natural environment. Using that type of organism, said loser (for example “weaker” bacteria so few are competitive against “natural” forms, so that they survive only if they are cultivated in optimal conditions and artificially maintained by man). This is a form of security of the device, but it implies maintenance costs of the habitat and of the colony. Philippe Marlière notices that it is enough, then, to submit that mass of organisms to a new kind of natural selection process in order to select individuals and strains more suited to survive (which is possible with some bacterias because of their high rates of reproduction). But, that solution asks once again the question of risk of escape in the natural strain of an organism or of an genomic part which became competitive, even “supercompetitive” (said winner).”

We have to stop here for a while, certifying that evolutionary containment corresponds to that “fail fast” solution already mentioned. Remarks made in wikipedia to that device are close to ours. It is also interesting to notice that, into the light of natural selection and the theory of evolution, a new surprising lexicon is entering the game. Synthetic organisms are qualified as winner and loser depending on their capacities of adaptation. The notion of competitiveness enlightens the application of a manager to biological phenomena. Moreover, it is important to note that our preventative approach leads us to fear for that competitiveness. Thus, the winner bacteria causes us to fear, while the loser bacteria stays within our ethical specifications. Vocabulary and lexicon used seem to be both ethically problematic and socially representative of new criteria of evaluation and the way to express it in contemporary life sciences. Like the liberal manager without a qualm in a system of concurrency (the social winner), bacteria will scare us but, through that lexicon, also becoming something that deserves our respect, because of the development of its aptitude. The use of a socially situated lexicon is no novel in life science, as shown in Evelyn Fox Keller and Emily Martin's works about the influence of explanatory metaphors in biology. Emily Martin focused about how metaphors about egg and sperm roles in the reproduction process have an important social impact about our perception of man and women.

• • • (4) Semantic containment***

Finally, a new challenge will be to be able to design organisms that implement a semantic containment, for preventing genetic cross-talk. We also consider with classical GMOs to build organisms programmed to commit suicide or to not be able to reproduce (for example, terminator genes or inhibition of reproduction).” Semantic containment will allow to be sure that the synthetic genome/organism is not any more able to share its genetic data with the Nature. Implementations of semantic containment could be to design a different genetic code that could reside in using • new codons, • new amino acids, • new nucleotides, • new DNA backbone, • New DNA polymerases, • New ribosomes

The French page of wikipedia remind us that noon of the four “bolts” offer “certain, definitive or complete protection”, but that has to be considered all together to get to a high level of security. These new framework has to be setup at world level. Industry could use Extreme Genetically Organisms, if and only if, they implement these 4-level procedures, which could be defined in a future ISO norm .

• • b) Protocols to fight hazard **

George M Church’s article, A Synthetic Biohazard Non-proliferation Proposal (Church 2004), is surprising in its aim and representative of a certain spirit of synthetic biology. This more academic source does not go through material modes of containment and biological systems of security. It proposes, in a very precise way, to set up an ensemble of procedures of control that are more or less institutional, to create a series of agencies, administrative protocols and organisms of regulation in order to “decrease risks while minimizing impact on legitimate research”. Thus, a licensing system of reagent and instrument is proposed, as “non-profit or government DNA Instrument & Reagent Registry (DIRR) database and web site would allow manufacturers and customers to register their instruments”. A chain of checking and responsibilities is described, from the seller to the customers, through entities as States, manufacturers and distributors of agents, shipping companies, etc. Registers, websites and databases are also presented as needed to manage “existing machines, the resale of used machines and confirmed destruction of machines.” Checking methods as developed by the Drug Enforcement Agency are promoted. That precision and proceduralization in the aim to answer to security imperatives is well described in the article and we won't reproduce it in detail here. But, we must wonder about that proceduralization. Two explanations seemed important to us. The first is about the structure of production in modern life science. Scientists in that field, especially Americans, have to answer to strict security specifications about biological materials needed for their research and handling. Thus administrative “machinery” is admitted as legitimate, integrated in the scientific process andused daily by researchers. That habits of scientists, in their ordering of biological materials or in their conceptions of necessary conditions of security, will determine their ethical discourses and recommendations. The other explanatory element I found in that article is the reassuring fact which can be found in the procedural, even bureaucratic, conditions to make synthetic biology. Thus, we can see here the expression of a “engineering mind”, expressed in rationality in that procedural form of the system of production and exchange in life science.

Biosafety stakes will have numerous effects on the way we will treat biosecurity problems. We won't take back all the containment proposals already mentioned and we will focus on new arguments, new discourses which are expressed when actors have to face “bioterror”. The proposals mentioned here also have to be considered as answers to some risks in biosecurity concerns.

• 3. Biosafety and biosecurity : a differentiated focus. *

In reference to its institutional membership with the European Commission and in a strategic perspective, the Synbiosafe report relates an interesting element about the formulated ethical stakes in synthetic biology. The report draws a gap between American and European interests about ethical stakes about biosafety and biosecurity. Europe is said to be more interested in biosafety matters and that the USA is more concerned about biosecurity problems. The report asked, in that reflexion, the more strategical and political question of it : “Will synthetic biology deepen the transatlantic divide opened up during past biotech debates?”. We won't go deeper into that point but we can notice the geopolitical stakes of biotechnologies that can come with ethical questions. Governance and political strategies that occur with the precautionary approach has to alert us about different motivations of the ethical debates on biosafety and biosecurity.

B. Biosecurity

• 1. Overview*

Vivagora refers to the democratization of access to synthetic biology as a cause of new risks. Thus the “important volume” and “low prices” of genetic elements are presented as possible causes of biosecurity risks. The internet, even if not directly mentioned, is considered as a new way of circulation for factors of risks, permitting visibility and large scale access to that genetic materials.

The question of internet (which will be more developed later) lead us to wonder about the nature of the goods of synthetic biology and about the risks it could contain. The immaterial nature of the goods of synthetic biology finds its origins in the field of genomics, discussed from an illuminating point of view in the works of Kaushik Sunder Rajan (Rajan 2006). He doesn't actually write about synthetic biology but about genomics, but as synthetic biology is based on genomic technologies, we can rely on Rajan's thesis. In Biocapital, The Constitution of Postgenomic Life, Rajan wonders about the nature and value of the goods of genomics, about what companies and researchers are motivated by. The goods of genomics are informational. They rely on treatment and handling of biological materials in order to create information from it. Rajan then proposes a decomposition of that informational product, the genome. That decomposition will make it possible for us to consider how the ethical stakes have to be regarded.

Rajan's decomposition :

Genomic information = Genetic Materials + Genotype Information + Medical Information

Then, without taking anymore from Sunder Rajan’s works, we have to consider that ethical questions about biosecurity have to be seen through two angles about the nature of the goods of synthetic biology : biological material and genomic information. The informational nature of goods coexisting with collaborative platforms in order to support “free” exchange of these goods within the community (as the (BioBricks) foundation) are considered risky in biosecurity concerns. By allowing anybody access to information increases the potential risks of voluntary misuse.

If we focus on public reception of biosecurity concerns, we can find some markers of the social construction of fear. In that perspective, the declaration of Roger Brent, Director of the Molecular Science Institute of Berkeley that 100 000 people are able to create anthrax is mentioned by observers and the media as the thing we have to be scared of. The very high figure, the potentiality of that risk regarding these “capacities” held by so many people and the object of this fear “anthrax”, referring to the post 09/11 alerts are very persuasive elements in order to create fear. Vivagora refers also to an initiative from the The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) about surveillance of genetic resources linked to pathogenic agents. Discourses about terrorist threats are built through these markers and effectively shift ethical concerns, but have to alarm us about what kind of social control devices are indirectly promoted here. Anti terrorism laws and devices (mainly the Patriot Act) seem necessary to life sciences in order to match with ethical concerns. Political implications, consequences and matters which underly the debates are needed to be considered seriously.

• 2. What Kind of answer to biosecurity concerns? *

Vivagora claim an integration of the principle of precaution in social and institutional devices about biosecurity. “In a report published in 2007 by Michèle Garfinkel from the J. Craig Venter Institute are presented rules of good practices, urgent procedures, enlargement of biosecurity committees, based on the extension of biosecurity frameworks already developed for recombinant DNA(Garfinkel 2007). We can find the proposal of Raymond A. Zilinskas and Jonathan B. Tucker, bio terrorism specialists, to take into account the principle of precaution. “It could be necessary to banish the use of every artificial micro organisms until the solid evaluation of risks” estimate both author of the article The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Biology.”(Tucker and Zilinskas)

The main issue of that proposal, through their institutional forms, is to call for control of the states seen as the one that can legislate about these concerns. Church's paper also goesin that direction, proposing the creation of agencies, procedures and international agreement about biosecurity issues. Thus, the Garfinkel report “suggest that the American Congress legislate in order to force every synthetic genomes manufacturers to check the absence of pathogenic sequences in ordered DNAs. “Such regulation need to be international to be efficient” emphasizing them”

Auto regulation?

Industrial labs are not forgotten in this debate, as Vivagora shows.

“On its own site, the Industrial Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB) has presented its regulation strains through an editorial of Nature of September the 25th...Thus, and in a voluntarist way, the American Gene Foundries Blue Heron Biotechnology don't honour the dangerous orders when the screening software detects sequences from agent classified as “bioterrorist”. No more than one third of companies practices that vigilance today.”

Thus, that “good will” is claimed, forecasting different kinds of positioning and strategies from these labs. As Sunder Rajan reminds us, bioethicists are now mostly coming from biotech and genomic companies. In his analysis of the biotech company Repository X (Rep X), bioethics is now included in the business models of such companies :

“So clearly, bioethics is a key area in which Rep X takes an interest, which is not unusual for a biotech company these days. Indeed, Rep X has its own in-house bioethicist, a bioethicist being an emergent form of expert mediator in the ethical debates that surround new biotechnologies. In fact, the CEO of Rep X says of hiring bioethicists : “I'm surprised more companies don't do it. It doesn't cost us anything, and in the end it may save us [money, time or reputation]. I mean, the whole idea of it is so reasonable. We've always said that if we're going on the front page of the New York Time we'd better make sure get it right”. In other worlds, bioethics is an integral component of Rep X business model.”

This preventive aspect is about to put them strategically in a debate which is about to take more and more weight in the next year, even faster if something like Church's proposals are carried out. That way, they could get the part of bioethics experts in the new born agencies or biosecurity organisations. This taking into account of ethical and biosecurity matters can also be seen through a political, economic and strategic positioning, for example, supporting risk precaution about biosecurity more than biosafety.

Biosecurity concerns impose on actors to privilege “political” solutions in addition to “biological” solutions about security. Thus, the world that appears under our eyes has two components, embodying both naturality and artificiality : the living and the political. We can reiterate here that the life' that is at the heart of our reflexion is a synthetic life, and so, the question of its naturality will be much more complex. The natural element to which we refer here is the thing on which anguish and risks are built on. It is the last natural part resting after handling and lab manipulations : the risk of modification of the organism through its evolution. Thus, even in the case of a synthetic organism, it is its membership to something like a dynamic of the living, connecting it to naturality, which is the focus of the ethical discourse. In other world, even if there is very little that is natural in a synthetic organism, that naturality will be the purpose of the ethical discourse. Life is so understood through concepts as “out of control”, “irregular” and “unpredictable”, leading us to risks and necessitating regulations. That regulation process will be lead by an other kind of artificial organism, created by man : the State. Artificiality of the State, already theorized by Thomas Hobbes (Hobbes 1960) , now take on the meaning of that regulatory body. Our way to deal with risks, unpredictability and uncontrollability caused by naturality make us entrench ourselves to the State, understood as a complex, artificial, reliable and predictable body. I admit that argument can be seen as quite exaggerated but it is a way to put into light how, sometimes, we are tempted to refer, to protect ourselves through simple diagrams. Here, we entrench ourselves in the protective arms of States, agencies, procedures and protocols, not only because of rational explanations, but also because they indirectly refer to something very artificial, constructed, by man, for man, and, through Hobbes' eyes, in order to find the security we hadn't in nature.

Different from the “winner” bacteria of biosafety concerns, people with malicious intentions are qualified with a different lexicon, lying in law-and-order discourse, formulated through the intervention of the States, agencies or necessary suspicion of labs. The unpredictability of the living, with a meliorative lexicon, is compensated by a pejorative discourse about mankind through figures of the failing scientist or the malicious terrorist.

• 3. Conclusion : the Steve Kurtz's case *

To conclude this part, I wanted to enlarge the debate, to complexify it with the help of an example, the concrete case of the artist Steve Kurtz. The Kurtz case allows us to illustrate a large scale of stakes in life science practices nowadays. Among that stakes we could find intellectual property matters, containment, bioterrorism, DIY practices, exchange between the scientific and uninitiated communities or repression.

Steve Kurtz is professor at Art at SUNY Buffalo and is founder of the activist and artistic association Critical Art Ensemble (CEA). In 2004, the artist worked on the GenTerra project, an ironic look at GMOs, GenTerra is about producing organisms “that help solve ecological or social problems” and on the Marching Plague project, mocking “the notion that biological terror presents any serious practical threat, arguing instead that extravagant spending of tax dollars to defend against bioterror is no more than a means of "maximizing profit and consolidating power through the matrix of biocatastrophe." . To carry out these projects, Kurtz kept at his home strains of Escherichia coli, Bacillius subtilis and Serratia, considered as inoffensive and daily handled in academic laboratories. After the heart attack and the death of his wife, Hope Kurtz, Steve called 911. Finding his “home made laboratory”, the police, present for Kurtz's wife’s death called the FBI and the Joint Terrorist Task Force who arrested the artist and opened an investigation about bioterrorism. Art works by Steve Kurtz often relyon biological material and already had been presented in art galleries and museums. One week after the arrest, the New York State commissioner of public health confirmed the inoffensive nature of the biological agent in Kurtz's house. After the failure of that bioterrorism accusation, the US Department of Justice charged Steve Kurtz and Dr. Ferrel from Pittsburgh University of mail and wire fraud. That investigation of mail, and listening of internet and telephone communications by police forces were permitted thanks to the US Patriot Act. Even if the name of the charges seemed less serious than bioterrorism, mail and wire frauds could lead both men to 20 years in jail. Dr. Ferrel is accused of illegal use of the Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) between Pittsburgh University and the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) to get the $256 strain of bacterias sent to Steve Kurtz. Indeed, academic laboratories get biological material from companies like ATCC through such agreements. The MTA specifies that it is forbidden to sell, share, post, or reproduce the material. Such specifications are not very respected in the academic and scientific field. Kurtz and Ferrel are accused of a rupture of contract, but neither institution (Pittsburgh University and ATTC) lodged a complaint about it. The Kurtz case is the first time that the US Department of Justice went so far in such a case. In its Criminal Resource Handbook, the Department asserts that such interventions are justified only in the case of prominent risks for the public and not for little cases. Mail and wire frauds are used in order to transform a civil offense in a federal pursuit. In June of 2008, Steve Kurtz won the case and was allowed to take his home made material lab back, after the failure of the FBI investigation.

That case is so dense that we will only mentioned the more interesting elements of analysis here, the main issue I want to point out is the blurring brought by the reality. We cross all the ethical issues, biosecurity and biosafety concerns by manipulating concepts, stakes and precautions without taking into account the complexity of the reality of human relationship, forms of exchange, discourses, etc. I think the Steve Kurtz case has to remind us that boundaries between scientific and uninitiated fields, interests and motivations, identities have to be considered as complex and moving. In that perspective, we can focus on how human networks expressed themselves with more fluidity than every procedure previously described. As mentioned, human connections, confidence or even friendship between people blur the picture we've tried to draw of the academic world. In fact, human connection and motivation are complex and unpredictable too and even if the MTA existed between Pittsburgh University and ATTC, it doesn't prevent Kerrel from giving bacteria to Kurtz, because of friendship or any other motivations. We also have to notice that the gap between academics and uninitiated persons seems blurred too, numerous kind of links and connections exist between all the social actors, leading to numerous kind of material and informational exchanges or practices.

I wanted to use this biosecurity case to show how it is possible and rich to use ethical approaches to learn about how people are related in science, now understood as a complex social world. That complexity, now visible and in a feedback loop, has to be taken into account in our ethical process, notably about certain proposals that now can appear to us oversmoothed regarding social reality of how synthetic biology, and life science in general can be actually practiced.