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Practices and Policies

There are much more to a good iGEM project than the work in the lab. An important pillar in the foundation of iGEM is also to raise public awareness on synthetic biology. In aim to do so we gave a presentation at the Danish Youth Association of Science (UNF) annually Biotech Summer Camp, regarding synthetic biology, iGEM and some ethical concerns. We involved the students doing the lecture to hear their opinion on the discussed topics. You can read more about our visit at the UNF ‘s summer camp under Education.

The youth are our outreach target. We hope that the young generation can provide the public with some new aspect on the use of synthetic biology.

To reach out to children, we have created a children book. This book provides teachers and parents a good basic tool for educating children in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). To read more about the creation of the book and to download our story, please go to A Children’s Book.

The different between right and wrong is important to keep in mind when working with living organism’s DNA. A big part of our project have been to cover ethical aspect regarding our project and indeed the general use of synthetic biology. If you are more interested in our ethical work, please go to Ethics.

The use of laboratory animals operates in a grey area ethical speaking. We have created a survey regarding the use of antibodies and test animals. People from all different continents have answered this survey. It shows that people in general are a bit ambivalent about the use of laboratory animals. However, the majority would like if the animals in the antibody production could be substituted with an alternative, such as E. coli. To see the full analysis of the survey, go to survey.