Methods

Introduction

The research on ethical issues in synthetic biology has been done parallel to the project on the bacterial relay race, and consists out of two main parts:

• Literature research
• Survey

The ethical research was initially based on the work of the TUDelft iGEM team 2008. The main reason to focus on reductionism and the notions of life was due to its interesting complexity, the lack of literature on this subject linked to synthetic biology, and the [http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=166192&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=492968 talk] of Dr. Caplan from the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. The possibility of doing a survey amongst a large group of people involved in synthetic biology seemed a great opportunity to raise the awareness of these complex ethical issues and to gain insight on how the synthetic biology community responds to them.

Literature research

Our approach was to outline the main ethical concerns that appear in scientific literature on synthetic biology. The next step was to investigate these issues and make an overview of the responsibilities of researchers in the field. After categorizing the issues, a choice had to be made on which subject to focus on. Since there are a lot of different issues with distinct implications and consequences, we decided to target the ethical issues concerning life (see background information). With both deep phylospophical meanings of life but also the science-driven changes of our perception of life, this would be a complex subject to tackle. Therefore, the aim of this project was not so much to find solutions to the ethical problems involved in notions of life, but rather to raise awareness on this particular subject, as well as gaining insight in the perception of the iGEM community, a large stakeholder in synthetic biology. For that reason we decided to conduct a survey amongst iGEM participants, supervisors and advisors.

Survey

Sample

Soon after the decision was made, a short e-mail was send to all the primary supervisors of the in iGEM participating teams to see if they would be interested in participating in the survey and whether they (or a different team member) would be willing to distribute the survey amongst the team. Of the 100 teams that were approached, a total of 56 teams replied and were interested in participating. These were I eventually send the survey personally. With an approximated average of 10 students and 4 supervisors per team, the sample size based on the 56 teams that were willing to participate is roughly 780. After closing the survey, a total number of 242 participants completed the survey, which equals 31% of the sample. After selection based on the outcome, a total of 231 responses were usable for an elaborate analysis.

Content