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Team:TUDelft/Ethics
From 2009.igem.org
Engineering Biology
Introduction
Since the marriage between technologies in molecular and cellular biology together with genetics and proteomics gave life to a new phenomenon called synthetic biology, a lot of ethical questions were raised. Although the definition of synthetic biology is not yet clear and future implications are yet uncertain, research in the field of synthetic biology is at its peak. Different articles claim that synthetic biology is the answer to curing cancer and the production of bio-fuel, and several leading universities assembled specific departments for this field of research. An OpenWetware created by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, gives free access to a large registry of BioBricks: basic “ready to use” biological machinery components. The most important resource for these BioBricks comes from the yearly iGEM (international genetically engineered machine) competition, in which teams of students can compete on building the best microorganism machine by combining, describing, implementing and/or designing these biological standardized parts.
There is a lot of literature on ethical issues in synthetic biology. The ethical concerns mainly address "physical harms" and concerns gained by researchers "closest to action" in synthetic biology in general, including:
- Bio-safety (Regulations for working in synthetic biology)
- Bio-security (Consequences of synthetic biology, e.g. bio-terrorism)
- Intelectual property rights (conflict of interest and who owns what?)
- Transparency (open source, availability)
Issues that are at least as important but unfortunately less frequently discussed in literature are concerns about "non-physical harms" and questions raised by the community, including:
- Communication (towards public and media)
- Naturalness (or artificialness)
- Attitude (towards life)
- Reductionism (consequences and implications when reducing biological systems)
Since the introduction of synthetic biology, ethical issues have been addressed and opinions, frameworks and solutions have been proposed. To get an overview of our responsibilities concerning different ethical topics we propose a framework that describes the main ethical considerations from a personal perspective, as shown in Figure 1.
The personal view describes features on how we perceive synthetic biology, what is our attitude towards life, and why do we participate in such research. The believes, perceptions and reasons for people to understand and work in the field of biology will vary between individuals. It is good to give these different subjects some thought, to make evaluation of your research somewhat easier. Moreover, when working together in a team it is important to know that team members can have different opinions. A healthy discussion can help the research because you can respect each others differences, learn of other viewpoints. Furthermore, it shows peoples personal qualities.
Externally, researchers are responsible on a social level for communication and security of the public. On a scientific level they should concern the safety of themselves and co-workers. In synthetic biology specifically they have to think about the consequences of making biological components freely available, how to deal with intellectual property rights and to what extend the research should be transparent to the community.
Responsibility
The proposed framework can function as a guideline for what is important and what are our responsibilities when working on synthetic biology. Although most of the topics are addressed in literature, policymakers are lagging behind in making regulations concerning these topics. Specifically a lot of questions are raised concerning bio-safety and bio-security. For example, what are the possibilities for bio terrorist or what are the consequences of do-it-yourself synthetic biology, where people can engineer organisms in their own backyard. Regulations and policies should clear up this fog of uncertainty. But the problem is: who is responsible? Should the government create certain guidelines, or should the scientific community self-regulate their own research? Are existing guidelines and safety measures on genetic engineering enough, or do we need to extend this? What about the open source properties, what if somebody patents a gene? Another question that follows from this discussion is whether synthetic biology is as new as some papers make us believe. Do we really need new guidelines? Did we not already describe safety regulations to keep modified organisms in the laboratories? These are difficult questions, certainly because key stakeholders will have different opinions and demands. Although these questions have an ethical undertone, they are better categorized in the policy field. The ethical aspects have been described extensively, it is now up to the policymakers to identify the problems, see where guidelines are needed and implement clear regulations when necessary.
Reductionism in Biology
A qualitative and quantitative analysis on how the opinions of researchers shape the technology known as synthetic biology, could be achieved by approaching many people in this particular field of science (mostly iGEM supervisors and participants). To pursue the quantitative analysis, I would like to invite as many iGEM teams as possible to complete a short questionnaire that should display their general opinion on ethical concerns in synthetic biology.
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