Aim:

To find out what the public want synthetic biology to do for them.

Introduction

We conducted this survey in the Christmas vacation, with the idea that the results from this survey could inform our choice of project. The responses we got back were very varied, with some very interesting and detailed possibilities, and other, less thought-through options, such as "stop racism".

Results

We decided to display the responses from this questionnaire as a word cloud. The size of each word in the word cloud is proportional to the frequency of its occurrence in the questionnaire responses. Therefore, this image shows illustratively the public consensus on which our project should focus.

Aim:

To find out the public's thoughts on genetic modification, and see whether they would consider a treatment involving modified bacteria if they were suffering with a UTI, as well as gauging their opinion as to whether antibiotic resistance is a problem.

Introduction

Throughout our project, we have been determined to engage with the public so that we can develop a project which will be as useful to as many people as possible. These questionnaires, along with interviews with medical professionals and posts on social media, comprise a dialogue that we have maintained with the public for the duration of our project.

Questions

Ages of participants

We included age brackets as part of the survey so that we could check that our data is roughly representative, and so that we could see to what extent people of different ages are informed about genetic modification and antibiotic resistance. We found that most older people (31+) have heard of genetic modification but not synthetic biology, and are less likely to allow genetically modified bacteria to be used as a treatment. Younger people (up to 30) tend to be more open to the new treatment ideas, and more of them have heard of synthetic biology. However, our results may be biased, due to the high proportion of our participants aged under 30. Different generations are likely to have had different educations; synthetic biology is a very new field, so it is likely not to have been taught in schools yet. Similarly, older people may be more aware, and sceptical, due to the previous GM food scare.

Awareness

To what extent do you feel that antibiotic resistance is a problem that needs addressing in society today?

Our survey clearly shows that the public think that antibiotic resistance is an important problem that needs solving, therefore we feel that it is an appropriate and useful area to direct our project towards. One of our team members, George, worked in a UTI clinic last summer, so he knows first-hand that UTIs are a big problem for a lot of people, with current methods of treatment still being inadequate in severe cases. When he brought this to our attention while we were trying to decide on a project, we thought it was worthwile trying to find a solution to this problem.

Which of these do you think is the most common infection acquired in hospitals?

Most of the public (45.5%) thought that MRSA is the most commonly acquired infection in hospitals, showing that they think that antibiotic resistance is a problem. However, with UTIs coming in quite far behind this (19.5%), it seems that the public are not aware of the risk of getting UTIs in hospital due to urinary catheterisation. This could be due to the fact that UTIs are advertised less than MRSA, but since this is an important issue, we looked into educating the public through sessions with summer schools and school students, as well as getting in touch with local media, such as BBC Radio Oxford, ad promoting our project across social media. We believe that this has helped raise awareness of problems associated with catheter-based infections, not only in the urinary tract, but also due to other catheterised parts of the body.

Have you heard of genetic engineering?

96.5% of the people we surveyed had heard of genetic engineering. However, we did not collect data for whether people thought it was a good thing or not. This would be something to pursue in further surveys.

Have you heard of synthetic biology, before this questionnaire?

Compared to the question about genetic modification, the results for this question were much more evenly spread between yes and no, with 58% saying they had heard of synthetic biology. Again, it would be interesting to see whether those who have heard of synthetic biology have a good opinion of it or not, and this would be an avenue for future surveys.

Treatment

If you had the option of using two treatments for an infection, where one was antibiotics and one was bacteria that were designed to cure the infection, which would you choose?

The majority (70%) of the people we surveyed said that they would take the advice of their doctor on this. This means that it is important that we talk to and get advice from doctors as to how we can improve out treatment, since if we can't convince doctors that this is a better treatment than any current treatment, the patients won't take it either. However, encouragingly, of those who wouldn't take the advice of their doctor, our treatment was favourite with just under half saying they would prefer the designed bacteria (48%), compared to 40% who would prefer antibiotics.

If your doctor recommended a treatment for an infection, which involved the use of bacteria that had been engineered to treat the infection, would you use it?

Our survey showed that if a doctor recommended our treatment, only 6% would not consider it. This is very encouraging data for our project, but again highlights the importance of gaining support from doctors, because without their backing, this project is likely never to become as common a treatment as antibiotics.