Team:Vilnius-Lithuania/HumanPractices/Education
Education
Our team put a lot of effort to broaden the views on how public people see GMOs in our society. We did not only discussed this quite sensitive issue, we also visited high schools and talked it over with the students, made them understand what exactly GMOs are. You can find more information about our trips to schools below.
But our educational goals did not stop here. We thought that knowing what people think might help us understand them, and we were right. According to the talks and discussions with the people around, we picked a few most popular myths about GMOs. You can find them here, below.
Furthermore, we made did a few more steps to introduce lithuanian people with the GMOs. We met a lot of young, curious and promising people at the Cafe Scientifique we organized, also we visited many startup, science meetups, Innovation Fair. You can find more about these steps in events page.
High school visits
Being the first iGEM team coming from Lithuania, we strongly agreed that it is our interest and responsibility to broaden the prospects of synthetic biology in our country. Most of the people in Lithuania are still afraid of genetically modified organisms and think of it as 'playing God' and experimenting with people. We wanted to introduce our society with the fact that synthetic biology and genetical engineering is not necessarily bad things and that they are mainly used for scientific purposes. Part of this plan was visiting high school students, who might even become interested in the field of synthetic biology or at least trigger some discussions amongst themselves or the parents.
Our team went to see nine different schools (and we plan on visiting another few in the autumn) and talked about what is synthetic biology, what it is used for, what we could do with it to make world a better place and, finally, what is iGEM competition. We visited high schools when we were in a brainstorming phase. Discussion with young people sometimes can suggest crazy ideas or applications of already known processes. Usually professors, scientists, students are stamped into the frames of what is possible and what is not. Visits in schools were a great opportunity to step out of these frames. There we realised that bacterial senescent may be very important and be applied in various fields. The main applications, which were suggested by students, were related with curing diseases. We took this crazy idea and thought that we really can make something huge. And controlling GMO is pretty big. When the team was taking first steps we didn't know that we are able to solve such a big problem and create something that will help the world. High school visits helped us to realise that.
We brought up topics such as genetically modified products and their use in our society, that is why our team and high school students discussed advantages and disadvantages related with the science of synthetic biology.
We asked them questions as:
- Do you know what is synthetic biology?
- Do you know what is it used for?
- What do you think about genetically modified organisms in general?
- What do you think about genetically modified food products?
- In what cases, in your opinion, they are good, and in what cases bad?
Initially many of the students agreed that they would not like to buy genetically altered products, especially food. However, after our talk students felt much more confident about genetically modified organisms – more than 60 % of the people we visited said that they will start considering them more wisely and, if the properties of the food are way better (e.g. tomatoes that do not rot or more nutritious rice), they would consider buying it. On the other hand, not all of the students initially thought that GMO food is so bad, and there were, of course, a part of students that would still say 'no' to any GMO food or product, despite if it is of better quality than natural or not.
It is worth noticing that we did not have any intentions to make students believe that all genetic alterations are good and GMO food is always better. One can agree that this field is still under a lot of investigations and scientific researches. Most of the students also said that the main thing, which keeps them a bit afraid of genetically engineered products is the fact, that this kind of science is relatively new, therefore all the experiments are under construction, which makes using GMOs kind of experimental. This is one of the biggest ethical issues of synthetic biology. However, we did intend to start a conversation about using these products in everyday life. Our discussion with the students showed that most of the people lacks the information regarding this topic – during our survey almost 90 % of the applicants said that they would be glad to hear more about that on the news, social media and other information channels.
In addition, our team gave a few examples that students have not known about before, such as insulin or other drugs. Many of them admitted that they lack general knowledge about synthetic biology. More or less amazed by how much we use genetically engineered products without even thinking, students admitted that GMOs can be and are very efficient in everyday life. Of course, there are many important ethical and scientific issues, related with independent usage of GMOs in our society. But what we can do is start talking about them.
We also talked about previous iGEM projects and we gladly noticed that students were really interested. They were especially amazed by the projects like colonising Mars, creating vegan cheese, aiming to cure cancer. During discussion, many students were thrilled by the idea, that we can use bacteria and biotechnology to cure some very serious diseases – such as AIDS, tuberculosis, cancer. They said that this genetical engineering is completely different than the one with food – so if scientists can focus on disease treatment, they definitely should do it.
Finally, we told students our story – how we came to be a team (the first one in our small country), what are we doing and how are we going to achieve our goals. As the matter of fact, we asked them what do they think about our project in the light of those excellent previous iGEM year stories. Most of students thought that we are aiming a very significant problem and that it is rather exceptional that we use synthetic biology to terminate the processes, built up by the same synthetic biology.
From students we got many interesting ideas, where could we use our bacterial system. They were really passionate about the iGEM competition and some of them even considered creating a high school team next year. We, on the other hand, had a lot of fun travelling to and from schools (which were, by the way, all over the country) and talking to young, but very serious and eager generation.
Myths about GMO
As a lot of people (not only in Lithuania) are discussing the pros and cons of genetically modified products, we decided to check the most popular myths about GMOs. Are you into horror, or better – science fiction? Well, look no further. Here are the top 7 craziest urban myths about our beloved GMOs (a.k.a. Genetically Monstrified Organisms):
GMO is OMG (Oh My God!) spelled backwards.
Well, technically it’s not a myth, but we assure you no OMGs were involved in creation of the word GMO, in fact (for those who might have been living in a cave for the last several decades) GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism.
And for those who think this is an absurd point to make, marvel at this.
The Desperate Bee.
Some people say that the recent collapse of the bee population is due to increasing use of GM crops. In fact, the recent drop in bee population was not due to the increased usage of GMOs, but to some nasty microbes that attacked bees. In legal terms this claim is an example of guilt by association!
The Safe Haven.
There are some that believe that Europe is the safe haven from all the ‘life-threatening’ GMOs. While it is true that in most European countries GMOs are not grown, we assure you that many foods, eaten by Europeans, are imported from abroad and are in fact made from GMOs.
My Sign is Cancer.
Some GMOs critics argue that food that is made from GMOs causes cancer. Though there was a study that claimed that GMOs has caused cancer in rats (a very untrustworthy study to say the least), other studies have not found a link between eating GMOs and incidences of cancer. Sorry to disappoint you on that one as well!
The Curse of Frankenchicken.
{...} Kentucky Fried Chicken has become KFC. Does anybody know why? We thought the real reason was because of the "FRIED" food issue. It's not. The reason why they call it KFC is because they can not use the word chicken anymore. Why? KFC does not use real chickens. They actually use genetically manipulated organisms.
This myth that KFC has been using meat that no longer qualifies as chicken has been around since 1995. However, it is stunning how the myth still gains popularity from time to time.
More on the story.
McAIDS.
Well KFC is not the only devious corporation out there, it appears that McDonalds is no less guilty of using genetically modified meat, to quote: "irreversible health damage can be done by eating this meat, resulting in diseases, who manifest themselves in a way similar to AIDS, and have symptoms related to Alzheimer's Disease"
The Mad Scientist.
There are claims that genetic engineering is a dangerous technology and humans should not meddle with nature. While nature is sometimes depicted as serene motherly figure, in fact it is an everlasting fight for survival in which anything goes and gene transfer between non-related organisms is actually not that rare.
Though GMOs are a fairly new phenomenon, humans have been adapting other species for their own use for centuries through selective breeding. Increasing crop yields, enriching ordinary food with beneficial components through usage of GMOs might be just the next step in solving famine, malnutrition and other problems.