Talks

Synthetic Biology ethics

Synthetic biology, a novel advancement in science field, isa popular study these days. It opens the door for scientists to create theirideas and put them into practice. However, some people are concerned about theethical issues of it, namely biosafety, environmental damages, biosecurity andintellectual property rights. In the followings, light will be shed on theseaspects and solutions.

With respect to the biosafety issue, it may be difficult toidentify agents of concern. It is because synthetic biology involves thecreation of lots of novel organisms in which it is challenging to classify themwith regards to pathogeny. This is because of the lack of prior experience,difficulties in identifying sequences with pathogenic properties as well as theunsuitable use of methods or practice. ¹

Other than that, the leakage of “bio-product” may threatenour health and nature. Upon the creation of new organisms without in-depthunderstanding, it brings loads of uncertainties in terms of the control means andpathogenic possibility. Once they are leaked, it may result from theundesirable crossbreeding among products themselves, or worse with othernatural organisms which seriously wreak havoc on the human health or evennature. One scenario is like that, infectious disease may be transmitted fromlaboratory workers to their family members, and to the whole community through uncontrollableairborne transmission.²There have been such documented cases of virus leakage from laboratories. Forexample, the leakage of smallpox poxvirus in Birmingham laboratory in UnitedKingdom in 1978, ³SARS virus in Singapore and in China in 2003 and 2004 respectively¹, which controversially drawpeople’s attention on the biosafety of synthetic biology.

Other than biosafety problems, environmental damage is alsoone of the concerns. With the requirement of the resources for developingbiomass of synthetic biology, it would be exploiting our ecosystem like landsand other natural resources. For example, large pieces of land were used to thebio-fuel development due to land limitation, which puts intense pressure onland that potentially affect the food yield, communities and the currentecosystem.²

Biosecurity is also one of the concerns of the synthetic biology.Given an understanding that some products are easily synthesized and lethal, itleads to the easy acquisition of the virulent strains for bioterrorism asweapons for detrimental purposes. For example in 2002, poliovirus was easilysynthesized with an estimated cost of USD 7500 in laboratory setting inuniversities.¹

Asides from that, intellectual property rights is also oneof the problems. It is because synthetic biology involves originalities with anumber of new products and techniques invented. This may lead to the copyrightproblem and dilemma between openness of resources and patent.

Regulations and policies can help solving these problems. Byregulating DNA synthesis through encouraging the companies which synthesizegenes to report the questionable DNA orders, this is effective in regulatingthe ethical issues and is currently in practice in United States and France. Other than that,building an up-to-date database that shows the sequences of genes andexperiments which are at risk can also get to the root of the problems.¹

To deal with the issue of intellectual property rights,improving the intellectual property system to a sound and effective system isan integral part such that the design rights are protected and the “openness ofresources” of synthetic biology can be attained at the same time.

Enhancing the international cooperation in regulating andgoverning synthetic biology is an effective way to cope with biosafety andbiosecurity problems. Different countries can exchange their resources anddata, communicate to establish measures to wrestle with the existing concernsdue to synthetic biology regardless of the difficulties. For example, humangenome project paves the path for the success of countries collaboration insolving problems.¹

In the social aspects, a lot of steps can be taken to dealwith the synthetic biology issue. First, creating platforms for the public todiscuss about it is an efficient way to collect different opinions from peoplefrom all walks of life. Since the technology of synthetic biology is closelyrelated to the life of the public, they should have the right and obligation toengage in decision-making process. Not only does it help to collect morediverse ideas, it can also allow the public to know more about the safety andsecurity problems with regards to synthetic biology.

Another social aspect that we can take action is througheducation. Taking iGEM competition as an example, it provides opportunities forundergraduate and high school students to learn and practice synthetic biologyin a free-risk environment. Other than competition, some universities doprovide courses regarding to biosafety and biosecurity¹.

Although synthetic biology brings a lot of benefits to oursociety and the world, it also has some potential ethical problems that we needto focus on. As a result, it is part and parcel which we have to delve into itin order to carve out a better future with the development of the syntheticbiology.

References:

1.      OECD,Royal Society (2010), “Symposium on Opportunities and Challenges in theEmerging Field of Synthetic Biology – Synthesis Report”.

2.      PresidentialCommittee for the Study of Bioethical Issues: New directions: the ethics ofsynthetic biology and emerging technologies. 2010 [http://www.bioethics.gov/news/].

3.      http://www.bmj.com/content/325/7377/1371/reply

Radio Programmes

We have done education on synthetic biology via local radiochannel. Our Chinese University Campus Radio (CUCR) is a public online radio (http://www.cucr.hk/) targets at Hong Kong youngpeople.

Our team cooperated with CUCR to produce a radio program. Inthe program, we mainly discussed Synthetic Biology, iGEM competition and ourproject content. We also shared some interesting experience in laboratory andmembers’ aspiration.

To listen to our iGEM radio program, please click: http://www.cucr.hk/2011/10/05/%E5%90%88%E6%88%90%E7%94%9F%E7%89%A9-x-igem/,or simply listen to the following soundtrack.

Our team members also took part in another radio programorganized by CUCR to discuss about the Life Science program in CUHK. They alsodiscussed about the iGEM competition and introduced Synthetic biology andbiosafety to the general public.

To listen to our iGEM radio program, please click: http://www.cucr.hk/2011/09/01/%E6%9C%80%E7%B7%8A%E8%A6%81%E8%AD%98%E6%8F%80-%E5%AD%B8%E7%B3%BB%E7%AF%87/,or simply listen to the following soundtrack.

questionnaire

Since the CUHK iGEM team aim to understand the perception of the public to the concept of genetic modification (GM) as well as Synthetic Biology, an online questionnaire designed by us was distributed in facebook. Several questions concerning science, GM and synthetic biology were raised. We were glad to see a diverging and yet meaningful result from the public with the total participation of 230, in which 113 of them are male and 117 are female. Participants are from different faculties including Art, Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Science as well as Social Science.

Interpretation

From the results, we found that:

·       88% of the participants believe that science has a great contribution to the development of thesociety. Many acknowledge the importance of science. 86% of the total findscience interesting, which is good news to us as most of the public are notrefusing to science.

·       Over60% of the participants think that GM products are safe to consume and only 10%of participants think that GM products cannot be popularly applied in thesociety. It can be deduced that the acceptance from public to GM products ishigh and yet can be further promoted.

·       Onlyhalf of the participants have heard of Synthetic Biology before. We believemore promotion can be done to let a larger proportion of people to get to knowabout this powerful novel scientific field of study.

·       Near 70% of the participants have thought ofutilizing bacteria to benefit the society. Furthermore, if a product,consisting of non-disease causing bacteria, brings convenience to user, over80% of the participants will choose to use it. It can be deduced that thepublic accept the concept of using product consists of bacteria. The humanpractice on Synthetic Biology has its effect achieved.

·       Two-third of the total think that the process ofgenetically controlling bacteria is dangerous and only 20% of the participantsbelieve that it is not risky to use the product of Synthetic Biology. It isglad to see that the public might have noticed the potential risks of SyntheticBiology. However, we suggest more safety issues in Synthetic Biology should beeducated to the public. On one hand, to ease the worries of the public on thesafety of it. On the other hand, to address the issue professionally to thepublic so they can know more about it in an efficient way.

·       Finally, we raise the issue of ethics, whetherhuman beings have the right to control bacteria just because we wish to. Wehope to raise the concern from the public on this issue, to let them think morethoroughly on this.