Team:Peking S/project/hp/investigation

Human Practice

introduction|Synthetic biology vs. Genetically Modified Organism|Public Investigation|Acknowledgement&Reference

Public Investigation

Public acceptance of genetically engineered products is influenced by many aspects. Researchers and companies often want to know how well do the public accept the products of synthetic biology and whether their products can put into application. We think that the students today are the potential consumers in the future. Moreover, the survey result of them may also tell us how far should we do in the aspects of education. Thus, we visited High school attached to Capital Normal University and Peking University in this summer, sent out hundreds of questionnaires, which were produced based on the general issues the public concerned about. From the result of the questionnaires, we got a rough idea about the cognition of students to the genetically engineered products and it provided a new perspective to look the products of synthetic biology again.

The first question aimed at gathering basic background of students. There were two hundreds and twenty-five students participated in our survey, in which eighty-six of them were high school students, one hundreds and thirty-nine students were studying in university. We received 39 and 91 copies respectively, with response rates of 45% and 65%.

Questions of part two investigated the general cognition towards the genetically engineered products of the students.This part of questions investigated how well the students knew about the genetically engineered organisim. The dark blue bar stood for the result of high school students and the light bar was for university students.

2-1.

Question 1

Do you know what is genetically engineered organism?

A. undestand very well B.know a little C.have only heard about it D.totally don’t know about it

Although most of the high school and university would have the lesson concerned about biology, the first question still showed the deficiency of knowledge about the genetically engineered organism among the students. As the technology of genetically engineering applicated more and more in our daily life, it is necessary to arrange more lessons to tell students understand such kind of technology better.

2-2

Question 2

Would you accept the work of producing genetically engineered organism?

A.totally accept it

B.it depends

C.don’t accept

D.can’t accept it at all

2-3

Question 3

How do you evaluate the relative merits of genetically engineered organism?

A. The pros outweigh the cons. B. The gains balance the losses. C. The cons outweigh the pros. D. Depends E. Don’t know

Most of the students doubted whether the genetically engineered organism have a good effect in our life. On the one hand, they were not totally understand the principle of producing genetically engineered organism. On the other hand, they were curious about the work and hoped there would be adventages to their life. The reasons caused them cautious about producing genetically engineered organism.

The third part of questions investigated how well the students accept the application of genetically engineered organism and what they were concerned about the products of genetically engineering.

3-1

Question 1

Would you accept the products of genetically engineering?

A. No problem B.depends C.No D.absolutely not E. don’t know

Based on the cautious attitude towards the genetically engineered organism, the result was not beyond the expectations. It told us there was long road to go to put the technology into practice, not only in the aspect of scientific research bu also in the aspects of public concern.

3-2

Do you consider genetically engineered products safe?

A. All of them are not safe B. some of them are safe C. all of them are safe D.not sure

3-3

If you know that most products on market are involved in genetically engineering technology to some extent, do you think they are safe or not?

A. All of them are not safe B.some of them are safe C.all of them are safe D.not sure

Compared the result of two questions, we could find that the difference was not obvious between the products for sale and not. It told us that the regulatory of market was not believed at all. Although the ratio of the people choosing A and D changed a little, the most of the students’ choice didn’t change a lot. In China, the regulatory of market may not be a good measure to regulate the genetically engineered products.

3-4

Question 4

The reason you choose genetically engineered products are?[from the option with most signifinance to the one with least]

a. they're better than the non-transgenic food [in nutrition aspect,for example]

b. safety[i.e. not harmful to human]

c. environmental friendly

d. they're under more effective surveillance by the government

e. information about the products is easier accessed[for example the ingredients]

f.other reasons__________

We use a simple formula to calculate the average score of each option,the option with a higher score ranks relatively higher than the ones with low score.The formula is （Σ frequency*weight）/total . The weight for first choice is 6, 5 for the second choice,and so on. The choices of both senior and university group have the same pattern.Apparently most people ,like we mentioned before,concern most about safety.

3-5

What do you feel about the subjects below if they are genetically engineered?[please rank all options from 1 point to 10 according to your acceptance to this subject:1 for unbearable,and 10 for totally alright]

a. food plant[like rice]__

b. microorganism[like bacteria]___

c .inedible plants__

d. consumption animals[like chicken]___

e. non-consumption animals

f. insects___

g.human___