Team:Amsterdam/Human Outreach/Education/Ethics

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Lectures on the Ethics of synthetic biology

On of the methods to start up an educated discussion about synthetic biology is by telling the people what the dangers and dilemma’s surrounding synthetic biology are. We have tried this by giving several lectures, at various places, about the field of synthetic biology and the dangers that come with this territory. The lecture has been given at several high schools, at the university and to one of the political youth departments involved in the Rathenau debate. Off course, this has been only a small step and we feel that more steps in this direction need to be made. But we are sure that, by giving this lecture, we have informed part of the public about the dangers and dilemma’s surrounding synthetic biology. We have made the first step towards an educated debate between the society and the scientists.

Ethics discussion with DWARS

On the night preceding this the jamboree in Amsterdam the Rathenau instituut organises, together with the European iGEM Committee 2011, a Meeting of Young Minds, in which political youth organizations from the Netherlands and the iGEM participants will debate the future of synthetic biology. The iGEM teams from the Netherlands have been involved in the project in an earlier stage. More information on this can be found here

Since the political youth organizations do not have the knowledge they need for a good debate, one of the organizations asked us to give an introduction presentation on iGEM, synthetic biology and the ethical side of this scientific field. DWARS, the youth department of GreenLeft, the Dutch Green political party, organized a debate, in the evening of the 29th of August, for their members and invited us to give a presentation in the beginning of the evening.

During the presentation we talked about what synthetic biology is and how it is defined. We introduced the iGEM competition and explained our project. After this theoretical part we discussed the dangers of doing synthetic biological research and to what extend we should worry about these dangers. We broadened this with the ethical issues surrounding the field. We closed our presentation with a small comparison of synthetic biology and genetically modification.

After the presentation followed a discussion with the present members of DWARS. The chairman had prepared a couple of statements that were talked about. These statements included, amongst other, the self regulation by scientists and the scale on which synthetic biology can take place.

In our opinion this evening has been inspirational for both parties. For us it was great to witness the enthusiasm of the political youth about the field of synthetic biology. We believe that the presentation and discussion has helped them in a great deal with the preparations of the debate on the 30th of September.

Systems Biology and Bioinformatics

On the 8th of September we visited the first year students from Systems biology and Bioinformatics. We thought these studies would be a nice way to stir up the discussion on synthetic biology. Most of our team members come from these studies and many of them will be the future scientists in this field. The discussion on synthetic biology should not be held only among the public. Scientists should get a fair chance to intervene in this discussion as well. To allow them this chance we have to properly inform them about the dangers and dilemma’s concerning synthetic biology. A way to do this is by giving a lecture about ethics and the field of synthetic biology and that is exactly what we have done. We believe that the lecture has had the effect we hoped for. The students seemed very interest in the story and asked a couple of excellent questions. Some of the students even wanted to join the Amsterdam team in the competition next year.

High schools

• under construction*