School Outreach Background
It has become a truism in popular culture that exceedingly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In parallel, away from the fringes of modern society, in the via media of Australian living rooms, perceptions of the frontier of advancing biotechnology is indistinguishable from science fiction. To be more precise, the fictional depiction of actual science to a non-scientific audience, is comparable to science fiction. With much nobler motivations than this, but perhaps in the same spirit, the Australian National University’s inaugural iGEM team has investigated the colonising front of optogenetics in E. coli. In particular, we have attempted to bring a promising construct of CRY2-CIB1 into a prokaryotic system as a way to use light induction for gene expression.
Of course, this captures the imagination of adults and children alike albeit far less exciting than the use of CRY2 in neuroscience. It is clear than in those anthropocentric applications, ethical theories need to be constructed surrounding innovations in optogenetics –it is less clear whether such questions are morally relevant for prokaryotes.
It is certainly clear that there are at least two ways of viewing gene ethics applied to cutting edge research. Either a new construct is categorically covered ethically by previous theory, or we must construct/revise gene ethics to accommodate. Such a “point-wise” approach has the advantage of forcing out an ethical theory for every issue but may lack global inconsistency. For instance, common law applying to one category of carcinogenic bacteria ought to apply to all categories of carcinogenic bacteria. In short, to go with such an approach is to deny ideal theory –it is indeed impossible to derive an ought from an is.
Now, one might take a view of the entire field of gene ethics and claim there must exist some scheme broadly describing whether a particular innovation is of ethical concern, and if so, of what variety. This, generally, forms a decision making process.
The 2015 ANU iGEM Outreach Program hits the bullseye in asking the right questions surrounding this normative procedure.
Our strategy is two-fold. First, we collaborated with the Australian Research Council’s various Centres of Excellence in engaging in conversations with the community both generally about our project as well as possible impacts on society. This is an example of the aforementioned “point-wise” approach –that is, for the specifics of what we are trying to achieve, what are possible impacts on society, and thus, what are the ethical concerns surrounding our project? Our other goal with these collaborative events is a greater reach into the community than we would have managed ourselves and subsequently we were able to engage a greater proportion of the public with our project thus dispelling the aforementioned truism.
Secondly, we conducted an ambitious educational program at a local high school, targeting year 7s and 8s. As a lower socioeconomic status school, a general lack of funding has a meant a lower share in science extracurricular events than neighbouring schools with greater funding. This means the basic structure of our program was created to be, at the very least, fun. To formulate the basic structure into an educational program targeting gene ethics, we realised that just as how the ideal and non-ideal theories of gene ethics differ in an experiential-cognitive way, education theories of critical thinking and analysis differ in parallel. Thus we sought to incorporate an experiential and social constructivist mode of teaching using cognitive thinking processes as the framework for our sessions.
Goals
| 1. | Learner associates the reflective equilibrium between ethical intuitions and ethical theories with personal decision-making processes. |
| 2. | Learner gains a nuanced understanding of the socio-cultural impact of gene technologies. |
| 3. | Learner develops a procedure for clarifying their own ethical intuitions through informed self-reflection. |
