Team:KULeuven/Rathenau

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Meeting of the young minds: Rathenau Institute

On the first evening of the European iGEM Jamboree in Amsterdam, the Rathenau institute organized a debate on the future of synthetic biology. In this debate, youth representatives of political parties and iGEM participants came together to discuss whether synthetic biology can have a great impact on our future and how we should handle this ‘new’ subject. Six young politicians (PINK, DWARS, CDJA, Young Socialists, Young Democrats and PerspectieF) and representatives of six participating iGEM teams (K.U.Leuven, UCLondon, Imperial College London, Potsdam, Paris Bettencourt, Freiburg) were invited to give their view on synthetic biology and how it can influence our future.

The debate was divided into three main topics: ‘Promise’, ‘Regulation’ and ‘Ownership’. For each topic, two politicians discussed their view. Afterwards, the other politicians and iGEM representatives could intervene and give their own opinion on the matter.

After an introduction by speakers of the Rathenau institute, the debate started. As mentioned above, the first theme was ‘Promise’. The first speaker was from the political party Dwars (Green Left), her statement was: ‘Synthetic biology developments cannot be stopped. The question should not be whether we want to use synthetic biology, but in what way.’ Her first thought of synthetic biology was that it is brilliant, as scientists can create biofuels etc. But also some other scenarios came to her mind, like bioterrorism. She was convinced that politicians are lagging behind and no one can stop development, so question is how we justify our acts. The second speaker, from the CDJA (Christian Democrats), did not share this point of view at all. His opinion was: ‘Science is a way of trying not to fool oneself. We shouldn’t fool ourselves in overestimating our capabilities to reform life’. He was very clear in his point of view by saying synthetic biologists have no governmental power, we are not politicians. We, as synthetic biologists, need to convince those people that we are concerned too. We are not just monsters creating even bigger monsters, no, we want to execute case-by-case studies and perform risk analysis before releasing something into the environment. Therefore the iGEM K.U.Leuven team thinks human practices are a very important part of scientific research. We want to inform people and talk with them about their anxieties and explain them what we are doing and why it could be beneficial for other people. One of the brilliant things of iGEM is the transparency; people can see what we are doing step by step and if they don’t agree with something or don’t feel save, they can always intervene and talk to us.

The second theme of the evening was ‘Regulation’. Question was how many risks we could take and how to justify those possible risks. The first speaker was from the CDJA (Christian Democrats), his statement was: ‘Synthetic biology should be prohibited, unless it offers a solution to a serious problem that affects society as a whole and the problem is not likely to be solved by other means in the future’. He thinks politicians should analyze every study case by case and decide whether to use it or not. He’s convinced synthetic biology is something dangerous and we can’t be too optimistic about it. The second speaker (Jonge Socialisten, Young Socialists) did not agree with this statement, he said: ‘SynBio and genetic modification should be regulated as if they were one (this means that all regulations should be equal for SynBio and GM for example concerning safety/ hygiene)’. The major issue with the first statement is the fact it’s time consuming. What if you have no government (and even win a world record for it, like Belgium) or if there are more important things to discuss in the politicians’ agenda? What if synthetic biology has created a cure for cancer and scientists need to wait until it’s approved by politicians? A lot of people could die or suffer while there is a cure. The politicians really think it is necessary to investigate every case, taking the risk to lose a lot of time? The representative from Imperial College London suggested an independent committee of scientists and non-scientists who investigate these cases and give their opinion on each study. Also the scientists would have to perform a risk analysis; this could be checked by other scientists and would be less time consuming than awaiting procedures from the government.

The last topic to be handled was ‘Ownership’. The first speakers from the Jonge Democraten (Liberal Democrats) said: ‘A cell is nothing more than a machine, which we are allowed to create and modify’. Our iGEM team learned at our debate that we should make a distinction between machines and cells because cells can reproduce themselves. This however, could be useful for scientists as an argument because this means the natural form of the cell can reproduce a lot and we can use only a few of them in synthetic biology without harming the main population or threatening to extinguish them. The second speaker was from PINK! (Animal Welfare Party). His statement was: ‘Nature does not need improvement through SynBio’. Before anybody could give their comment on this statement, the moderator asked some simple yes or no questions to the speakers. One of them was: ‘Do you think synthetic biologists should resurrect the dodo?’ This question really got everybody to think if we can make up for our past mistakes to mother nature… and provoked many different reactions. The speakers from PINK! were completely against it, while the speaker from the Jonge Democraten thought it could be very tasteful (as our ancestors ate away the whole dodo population). The K.U.Leuven iGEM participants think people have caused a lot of problems like global change and overpopulation etc. Now it’s our turn to help nature and we can do so with new developments like Synthetic Biology. For example, E.D.Frosti can freeze ice and prevent ice formation. By freezing ice, we could help to stop the degrading of the North Pole and the anti freeze function could help to clear icy roads.