Team:Valencia/Experts

Interview with Engineering Without Borders

Engineering Without Borders (EWB) is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) dedicated to cooperation for development, which seeks to put technology at service of development, in order to construct a fairer world society.

We consider our project would be of great application in many EWB projects in underdeveloped countries, so we had a meeting with two of its members and asked them some questions about our water-disinfecting system:

What’s the global situation in the world regarding drinking water? As you know, millions of people die every year because they don’t have access to drinking water. We differentiate between “black waters”, which are contaminated by bacteria causing numerous diseases such as cholera, diarrea or typhoid fever and “grey water”, which are contaminated mostly by chemicals. We believe water is not a necessity but a human right, so everyone should be able to have access to safe drinking water. Unfortunately, that’s not the case and there are lots of places, especially underdeveloped countries, lacking the most basic water-treatment infrastructures.

The aim of our team is to develop a biological alternative for disinfecting contaminated black water using synthetic biology. What do you think about it? We believe such a project would be of great benefit, especially in rural areas where chemical contamination is negligible and all water-contamination problems relate to bacterial diseases.

We know you are radically against GMOs. What’s your opinion on using genetically modified bacteria in our project?

Well, if we understand correctly, your project doesn’t involve releasing any modified organism into the environment. It has nothing to do with GMOs used in agriculture or food industry, where the modified organism enters the trophic chain and interacts in different ways with the ecosystem. Anyways, we have some concerns regarding your modified bacterial strain. What would happen if it was released by accident into the environment? Is there a special design to avoid this possibility?

We would like our project to follow some ethic guidelines. Do you have any recommendations about what to do / not to do?

We believe such technology should be free for everyone. It should be simple, appropriated, accessible and easy to implement. Your system should not impose some sort of dependence for the people adopting it.

In your opinion, what are the main risks of our project?

As we said before, our main concerns are regarding the modified E. coli strain. What if it’s released into the environment? Also, what happens with the peptides released in the disinfected water? Could they cause any harm to other living organisms? Are they harmless to humans?

We have these questions in mind and we understand that it would require further investigation to clarify and quantify the different risks. Do you have any other suggestion to our project?

Yes, we think it would be a great idea to elaborate a sort of deontological code to set your ethic guidelines regarding your project. This code should contemplate the different phases of research and development, the validation process of your system, its future uses, etc.