Team:Vilnius-Lithuania/HumanPractices/Events
Events
Cafe Scientifique
On September the 3rd our team had an opportunity to talk about synthetic biology and present iGEM in a popular event, called Café Scientifique. Café Scientifique is an exclusive event, because event takes place in a café and is mostly for non-scientists, but the topics vary from archeology and human origin to stem cell research and biotechnology. This is a discussion-like event, in which we got a chance to participate, present our topic and iGEM competition and hear opinions of people from various fields.
Our team member Ingrida presented what is synthetic biology and iGEM competition. Together with the audience we discussed pros and cons of synthetic biology and GMOs. Everyone knows that our society is highly afraid of genetical engineering and its possibly outcomes. People agreed that a dialogue between scientists and society is essential, when we are talking about biotechnology. There are some opinions and fears, associated with synthetic biology and GMOs, but also we observed that audience knew some serious advantages of this scientific area.
Our team especially liked one comment from the audience, that one hundred years ago people were exceptionally afraid of radio waves. They thought that radio waves will increase the rate of diseases, birth defects and development abnormalities. We could say the same thing almost about every new invention - radio, electricity, biotechnology. The audience agreed, that nobody knows the long term impact of GMOs, however, there are no logical reasons to be terrified.
This event proved that biosciences are interesting for society, because audience was large and active. We hope that this discussion will contribute to people's understanding about biosciences, synthetic biology and genetical engineering. In addition, our team was amazed by how many people after discussion shared the interest to join the iGEM team next year. We are really happy to make an impact on synthetic biology community development here, in Lithuania!
We are happy that people support us in every step.
Discussion with the commity of GMO
Our team educated society during various events, as we described. But that is not the only thing we did to help the situation in Lithuania. After some visits to ministries and conversations with politicians, we decided to visit the Ministry of Environment. Therefore, on 17th of September Ingrida had a meeting with Odeta Pivorienė (a department of environment protection) and Neringa Šarkauskienė (a department of GMOs). This meeting was dedicated to share some insights from society, offer some suggestions for the new amendment for the law of GMOs control in Lithuania and make a partnership between Vilnius iGEM team and the Ministry of Environment.
In Lithuania, the law for the GMO control was released in 2002 and it has only been changed once in 2006. Now our government is going to re-new this law.
Therefore we analyzed the existing one and arranged a meeting with a department of environmental protection at the Ministry of Environment. This department prepares proposal for the changes in the law and we agreed on further co-operation. On our proposal we agreed that there must be some place for education in synthetic biology technologies between all these documents. We agreed to establish a voluntarily based group of life science students, who can make visits to the certain groups and committees at the Parlament of Lithuania. We thought of the idea for students to join the monthly meetings at the Ministry of Environment and arrange encounters with the ministers. This kind of activity is really required for our society. Therefore, as our (Vilnius iGEM team) and Ministry's of Environment missions overlap, we will definately continue this partnership.
On 5th-6th of November there will be meeting of Baltic Countries held by this ministry to introduce the development and achievements of Lithuania in a field of environment. In that case, a department mentioned above, wants to draw an attention to synthetic biology. We are invited to participate in this meeting and we are asked to prepare a speech about our project: the biotechnology and iGEM as well.
We are really happy for this prospectively long-lasting co-operation with Ministry of Environment and we want to thank them for taking care of lithuanians, their education and development of science.