"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world." - Robin Williams

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 of 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. During the presentation we asked what their opinion was on the discussed topics. You can read more about our visit at the UNF ‘s summer camp under Education.

The youth are one of our outreach target groups. 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 authored 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 this unique book and to download our own free copy, 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 some of the 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 is a grey area ethical speaking. We did a survey regarding the use of antibodies and test animals. People from 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.