Team:Paris Bettencourt/HumanPractice

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Abstract

The grand scheme behind the Parisian Human Practice of this year is to synthetize questions and possibly answer some of the concerns or issues that previous iGEM might have had. While this exercize being done we expect that new questions/concerns might arise. With this exercise, an outline of needs and responsibilities of either iGEMers, synthetic biologists or governmental bodies can be made. Using this final we hope to create a unified document: citizen and scientific proposal on synthetic biology.

For more information read below the call to other teams.

Updates

August 5: A citizen and scientific proposal on Synthetic Biology

After many unsuccessful attempts at creating a viable (may it be anthropological, sociological, ethical etc.) I have come up with the following idea with our main supervisor.
Much like in the early times of Biotechnology scientists gathered and set for themselves some basic standards and practices on both ethical and pragmatic issues I believe that it is time we, iGEMers, as future researchers are entitled to have our word on how the field of synthetic biology (as well as the iGEM competition) ought to look like. Did you know that the President Obama asked last year for a report on bioethical issues regarding Synthetic Biology. the report came out in December 2010 and included a set of recommendations that the discussion panel deemed necessary. Good. Better yet: why not produce a more down-to-earth proposal on synthetic biology ?
As an interesting turn of fate 2012 happens to be the year in which both French and US Presidential elections are happening (and 2013 for the German ones), what if we could produce a unified document that could potentially change the face of how Science is done? Ambitious? Most probably BUT if we co-operate on European level such an aim is completely attainable.
I am therefore setting a call to all Human Practitioners of other European teams, let's work together and try to do something BIG.

Please find the outline I propose for the co-operative project

Right now I have already asked the following team to cooperate in that project :

If any other team is interested in cooperating, of course you are welcome, don't hesitate to contact us.

September 2

Unfortunately, the call collected limited amount of support. Nonetheless, good luck to all teams in the limited time left!
Since the first update, I carried on the first part of the first step:
All the wikis of ALL iGEM teams from 2007 to 2010 have been scanned for human practice projects or otherwise questioning of the utility of their projects or extensive concern about bio-security.
A big thanks to Grenoble for cooperating with us. Thanks a lot for the video you sent to us! It shall be analysed and included in our HP project.

September 18

Here, is the first issue treated and debated by the team.

On the matter of patents and patentability

Through the scanning of previous wikis, it was noticed that a theme, albeit central to biology nowadays, had been treated only twice. It ought to be mentioned that there is no need for an extensive survey of the literature to get a grasp of what the issue revolves around. Conceptually, it is mostly an opposition of private versus public good or reward versus exclusivity. Here, I present a view that is clearly from the narrow point of view of students in research and participants in the iGEM competition.

The process in and of itself had been created to reward an inventor by allowing him exclusive economic benefits for usually twenty years. The European criterion is as follows:

Art. 52(1): ” European patents are granted for inventions that are new, involve an inventive step and are susceptible of industrial application. An invention can belong to any field of technology » ¹

This is quite vague and probably inadequate as we will see later. From my understanding, in regards to patentability of the living, treatment methods on animals and humans are not patentable while the molecules used are. Naturally occurring organisms are also excluded. However, and this is where it is most relevant to us is the point about microorganisms:

Guid. C-IV, 4.7 : The exclusion does not apply to microbiological processes or the products of such processes. In general, biotechnological inventions are also patentable if they concern biological material that is isolated from its natural environment or produced by means of a technical process, even if it previously occurred in nature.¹